I open a forty-year-old can of worms

The ashes are mostly symbolic. Don’t be so scientific.

Well, you took the high road and you’ll never harbor any regrets for that.

I find cremation repellent.

My brother, who is a part-time funeral director said “you’re getting an arm at most.” It’s The Ashes Delusion. Once you’re disabused of it, what you’re given afterwards is surely insufficient to serve as a symbol. In any case, I don’t understand how you’d want to burn someone you say you love(d) as soon as they’re out of the way.

Is this the high road? I wouldn’t like to see the low one.

What’s the difference? your physical form is dead. My dad was cremated as was my grandmother, it was their wishes. If someone you love tells you what they want after they die you do what they say. What else can you do? The boyos don’t want me cremated so i won’t do it most likely. I’ll go all hippy dippy and get one of those ecological things where they plant my dead ass under a tree, i’ll ask for the lyrics of the Guided by Voices song, I Am a Tree, to be placed near it and that will be that. Funerals and the like are for the living and people tend to spend an exorbitant amount of money on them. My old man even told me to do it cheap, lol!! and save the dosh for something more fun. To be honest the ashes don’t mean shit, it’s the symbolism and memory we attach to them because many people need to cling to something. When i attach something to my old man i prefer sunsets over Lake Erie or the sound of waves, not ashes in a box or a casket in the ground, he’s in the wind and the faces of my sons. And let us not forget, the Vikings were the kings of kick ass burial ceremonies and they burned their dead on a boat and pushed it out into the water, come to think of it i may have to see about talking the boyos into that!

That’s what I’m doing. I’ve got it arranged in a woodland burial site near Lancaster which doesn’t allow any form of stone or memorial or other stuff. It’s some rich person’s land and they have deer and all sorts of animals roaming around.

Your physical form is only dead in terms of being assembled as a human. I will have eternal life (well, for a few billion years anyway, and that’ll do). Worms and other subsoil creatures will eat me and my body will become part of them. They will be eaten by higher predators, carrying a bit of me with them. I won’t die, except in a human sense.

I can’t get my head round the idea that this person you have loved, in many cases, physically, you are so keen to stick in an oven once they stop being useful to you. And it prevents them from having the afterlife I will have.

I want to be burnt then chucked into the River Thames (the bit I live near). I want to be sure I am just dust; sod being worm food (opening cans of them is quite enough). A friend of mine likes the idea of the Tibetian practise of Jhator, or sky burial, where the dead body is left on a moutntain for vultures and other scavengers to scoff. Death is the only guarantee in life, so we should be allowed to choose our disposal - or at least think about it. Re your escape plan (smooth segue?), I make a good living selling words and grammar to foreigners -1:1- a good gig if that’s your shctik. Mind you, the tourist boats sound splendid when/if the weather picks up. I’m sure you’ll sort something out. You seem resourceful. 55 is a kick ass age.

Yes I saw a programme about that method of death. It really appeals. We slightly lack vultures in this country (well, avian ones anyway).

I like your linkage, Lass. Funny you should mention flogging tenses to foreigners… [tries to sound tantalising about next post coming tonight].