Damn You, Hippies! Now I have to re-plan my Funeral.
I had my whole funeral elaborately planned out, down to the musical score and the laser-light show.
All my guests would be required (and checked by Drag-Queen bouncers) to wear costumes at my funeral – even my grandparents whom I am convinced will outlive us all. Champagne, sushi, Thai and Indian cuisine would be served to all my guests by servers, on roller skates. Cuban cigars, whistles and neon glow-sticks would be handed out to mourners – think Burning Man meets Irish Wake.
I wanted conga-lines around my hand-carved, wooden coffin (which is to be blessed by an African shaman). I wanted my mourners to use my coffin for doing the limbo. The grand finale: My family and friends lowering me into the earth with Queen blaring Another One Bites the Dust.
My gravestone would actually be a statue of me (at the height of my beauty) Patron Saint of Nicotine, made of flint (to light cigarettes) and sand-based to serve as an ashtray to anyone who visits my grave (I do not want cigarette butts littering my grave!).
That was the plan and then, I heard about eco-funerals.
When I heard about a green funeral fair some years ago, I just had to check it out – wouldn’t you? I mean, it is hard enough being ecologically correct when you are alive; but now we have to worry about being green when we are dead? Apparently, a corpse can be propped up in bed at home to receive visitors (and perhaps play poker) one last time, before returning to the earth, wrapped in a shroud or biodegradable coffin.
I was told that 827 000 gallons of embalming fluid are buried in the ground every year. I learned that the energy used in cremation is the equivalent of driving a car 4 800 miles. They also told me that gravestones are not essential.
“But how would we find our dead people?” I exclaimed. “Use clairvoyants? Metal detectors?
The Answer: Corpses can be located by means of a radio frequency tag as they do in natural burial sites all over the country.
And yes, most people, myself included, assume a body will decompose rapidly and smell terrible, but now I know the eco-secret: dry ice. Other accoutrements of death included St. Brigid’s straw crosses, ceramic life masks, funeral hats and more.
So now I am going to have to re-plan my whole funeral. This may take some time because I will have to insist everyone attend my funeral by hybrid car, foot, cycle, roller-blade or use public transportation; use only biodegradable body products that day; serve organic sushi, Thai and Indian; have compost toilets and then use mourner manure to fertilise the flowers on my grave; and so on…
At least I can still have the mourners do the conga-line around me and use my corpse (in the perfect shroud that goes well with my eyes) as the limbo stick. Then, be buried to Another One Bites the Dust.
Recipe for Kelly N Patterson
¼ Indiana Jones
¼ Mother Teresa
¼ Hunter S Thompson
¼ Dr. Seuss – with a side of wasabi.
WE HAVE NOT REQUESTED PERMISSION TO USE THIS
Dated March 2012
