Temporary

Today was one of those totally surreal days, from this morning's interaction with the cop who thought my car was stolen, to saying goodnight to my mother this evening on the front lawn, as the Snowbirds flew over, practicing for some airshow or another. In between, I worked my first shift at a friend's coffee stall at the market, convinced the cop that I do own my car, watered the dill transplants in my community garden, did a little grocery shopping and had several increasingly bizarre telephone conversations with people I don't know. The last one was with a man who I will call a cemetery manager for lack of a better term. The conversation revolved around the disposal of my late father's ashes.

My dad was cremated last year. My mom, who will be 85 in about a week, brought his ashes with her from Victoria, to be buried in the plot he purchased for this purpose, many years ago, before they moved out west. We had a sort of family meeting where we all sat around and grumbled about what to do next and realized that none of us had a clue about how to proceed. Did we just take the ashes to the cemetery and dump them? Surely not. Did we need to bury them? In what? Are there regulations about hole depth and so on? Would we be needing a marker? Where exactly was this plot my dad had purchased, anyway?

One of the things I wish we could change in this country is the way dead bodies are disposed of. First of all, nobody talks about death as something that happens to everyone. We talk about it as though it only happens to the unlucky. We act frankly astonished when someone dies.
"Remember (insert name here)? Well... you won't believe it... HE DIED!"
Then, we perform a series of bizarre rituals on the body, starting with embalming (eww...) and ending with the burial in an absurdly ornate and indestructible casket. We place this casket in a large, deep hole, occupying a piece of land that can never be used for anything else. To ensure this, we plunk a big granite marker on top, all engraved with words and decorations, permanent enough to be admired until the end of time.

I think it is high time that we started planting people like seeds when they die. Don't embalm me; (please!) instead, wrap my body in a biodegradable shroud and toss me in a small deep hole. Then plant an oak tree on my head. Leave me in the food chain, please. Don't render me useless to the planet I love and call home by "preserving" my body with pickling poison and air-locking it in a vault made of virgin timber. Please!
My dad's ashes are in a plastic urn with a label that says something like, "This is intended only as a temporary container" as though it will suddenly evaporate if we try to keep them in there for any amount of time. Why? We all know it takes plastic a long time to break down. I guess the idea is that you're supposed to feel like a cheap cad if you leave your loved one's ashes in the "temporary" container.

The human body is a temporary container.

I wish we could all get over ourselves and start facing death in a more realistic way. There are so many billion of us now that I guess we'll have to, one of these days.