CONTEMPLATION OF THE END
I was recently given one of those “end-of life” sheets. You know, the “what-do-we-do-with-the-body” and “how-shall-you-be-remembered” type of thing.
I have a problem. Next year I will be 70 (or as I call it “middle-age”). I don’t think I particularly care what happens to this meat-machine once I leave. It has served me well and I will remember it fondly, much as I do some of the old vehicles that I’ve owned.
On a tombstone or wooden plank write: “The Adventure Continues”.
Options for the body, from least to best:
- Wrap it in a sheet and put it in the ground.
- Donate to science. This old, weird brain might be interesting.
- A sky burial or open air funeral pyre would be cool.
- My ideal end to this story would be to know it was coming to an end, walk into the desert or mountains, and lay in an arroyo beneath a juniper or on a mesa top under an old pinon. The coyotes and vultures, ants and beetles and crows should be my final attendants along with the wind and land (a thunderstorm would be nice too). If my bones are found later on, I would like them to be decoration and my skull decorated and placed atop a shelf of poetry books.
For my memorial:
My vision is to have many people attired in bright, “gypsy” dress, around a campfire in the mountains that I have loved. They should dance and play instruments, laugh in pain and cry in joy and experience their emotions. They should sing and read poetry (maybe some that I have written) from early morning into the night and know that they are loved. This should be a party with minimal drugs and alcohol and zero violence. Those who feel moved to should eulogize as they see fit.
Commend me to the Unknow
and know my heart is happy.
The adventure continues.
Religion:
I am Unitarian Universalist. I identify as “Quantum Mystic”. Quantum Mysticism is a personal creation and belief that in this multiverse all things are both possible and impossible and that it will never be fully understood with words alone. I am an imperfect believer.
I do not expect any of this to be important soon, but it has given rise to some creative contemplation.
Thank you for reading. I love you all.
Dana
