“My husband and mother are in the closet and I don’t have the time to plan a ceremony, invite attendees, travel and honor their dead whims or research colorful ways to depart with their ashes. I’ve had their remains packed in a jar for years and I don’t have time to drive across country to scatter those ashes”
The predicament also brings home the understanding that I too could be left in a closet. A chintzy1 gold jar rusting in a neglected car, basement, or disregarded on a worn pantry shelf only to be rediscovered as a unique but terribly distasteful vase that goes nowhere near that 3,000 dollar sofa. The cheap, gold plate on the stainless steel slowly scratching and fading. Seriously. Being left as an unfashionable and unstylish, boring, dirty, dirty bobble in the dusty corner of a Goodwill for 8.45 is my worst fear.
In 1998 the Washington Post reported a story of a woman who discovered human remains in a quirky canister sitting on the Goodwill sale shelves. To add insult to injury the ashes were left on the Goodwill shelf for months. It took a small army to find the original owners. But at that point the damage has been done. You were an unfashionable, unstylish, boring, dirty, dirty vase and you can’t wash off that kind of humiliation.
In 2019 the BBC News reported a story concerning several washed up urns. Apparently a few urns mysteriously showed up onto a Dutch beach. Trip Scheepvaart, the company responsible for the burial of these urns was contacted and asked to explain this anomaly. They patiently explained that one of their company employees slipped and dropped a wet box of urns over the boat railing into the ocean. It was an accident.
Stories like these have allowed me to offer up a serious, honest, and heartfelt business proposal. For a negotiated-case-by-case fee, I will lovingly honor your grandmother’s, cat’s, dog’s, husband’s every wish and deathbed whim. Whatever their dead little hearts desired. I have solid training in crisis and grief counseling. I will sit as quietly as your most loving pet and carefully listen to the stories of loss, grief and stress without interruption. As a graphic designer I can design invitations, letters, notes, and envelopes. If circumstances allow, I am able provide consultations regarding how to style your urn so it will indeed compliment your 3,000 dollar sofa. As a writer I can write gorgeous, sincere, eulogies about Grandma, Grandpa, Mittens or Buttons.2
Furthermore I enjoy driving. As a responsible chauffeur, I will strap Grandma in and begin our long distance drive. I will do this with quiet a determination while the speakers blare the meditative hum of the Low Flying Owl’s album Elixir Vitae3 singing “Let’s swim away. When we’re tired we’ll drown together.” I can drive Grandma across the country to her favorite bench where she enjoyed lunch with her best friend as a child. We can both enjoy one last black licorice stick I don’t particularly like from that candy shop Grandma always frequented when she walked home from grade school. I can take Fido to the dog park for one last round of fetch.
And yes, bucket list requests are on the table. The life experiences your loved ones longed for but never had a chance to complete. Pay me enough and I will sky dive with Grandpa. I will hurl out of the plane screaming and terrified with Grandpa tucked into my arms just to strike one off Grandpa’s bucket list. I will take a jar of Grandma’s remains and drop down into a protective cage to gawk at the Great Whites. Fido and I will run with the bulls in Pamplona then kick back to share a Sangria. Once we enjoy our time of leisure we will visit the Museo Nacional del Prado and there we will marvel at The Garden of Earthly Delights for hours. Mittens and I will rave in the depths of a quiet and majestic forest with approximately 1,200 other souls. Music blaring, lights flashing until the cops come down on all of us with king kong force.4 I won’t even charge for that one.
Pay me enough and I will handcraft Grandma’s, Grandpa’s, Mitten’s, or Buttons’ ashes into a fierce jewelry set to match your favorite assemble. Pay me enough and I will stuff Grandpa into fireworks. Cremation fireworks are made when you load about three tablespoons of human ashes into shells and then the remains are launched majestically into the air. I will light the Grandpa-fireworks and make a Grandpa-fireworks-show that will rival any neighborhood 4th of July party any day of the week. Grandpa will burst into majestic colors of blue, red, and yellow and my heart will swell with pride as I videotape the event for the loved ones left behind. One last hurrah.
When dealing with Grandpa-fireworks, cannons, digging holes in the middle of the desert, smuggling various contraband, purchasing illicit substances on the black market, running a small arms race on the fly5, and trespassing, cops may be called in these instances. Not to worry. I’ve watched several videos pertaining to the art of managing police officers and have dealt with them personally. They will say “Hi Ma’am what are you doing here this evening?” With the cool skill of a crisis line counselor I will say “Officers am I under arrest? No? Well I do have the right to remain silent correct? With all due respect I would like to remain silent. Please understand I mean no disrespect.” They will look at me with awe, turn around and leave.6
One of my most noteworthy and elegant requests comes from Chuck Palahniuk. A man of serious means and respect. His request requires ongoing maintenance, sacrifice, and ceremonial allegiance to his care. We carefully negotiated an arrangement in which his cult will carefully and with great reverence annually remove the impure and compacted snow from his gravestone which has gathered through weeks of snowfall. The lightly dust polluted grave snow will then be hand churned using an old fashioned, wooden, barrel-shaped, ice cream maker. No electricity. No cutting corners. The cult will hand crank the grave snow and sugar in a salted ice bath to ensure the best possible outcome. After several shifts of hand cranking the grave snow mixture each member will participate in a communion. Like cannibalizing the blood and flesh of Christ on Sunday, each member will pass out a serving of Mr. Palahniuk’s grave snow and with great reverence and deep contemplation ingest the egg-nog flavored Mr.-Palahniuk-ice-cream-grave-snow-dessert.
Other delightful memorial options include adding your loved one’s ashes into tattoo ink which will be used to create a righteous tattoo on a loved one’s body part. Their ashes can made into your favorite music record so you can impress your favorite hipster. Plant them as a small tree or add them to a sun catcher. If you would like, I can take your loved one’s ashes to a lab and there they can be smashed so violently and with so much force the ash will create diamonds. Diamonds for you to flash and flaunt brazenly as you tell your posh dinner guests about your shiny new conversation piece that was your dead grandpa’s ashes. If you don’t possess the cash to pay for diamonds I can pour the ashes into a tiny hourglass that will be added to all the other bobbles included in to your favorite family board game. Grandpa’s remains quietly keeping us in check and slowly running out of time. With Grandpa’s dead remains encapsulated into the tiny hourglass we can all truly bond over family game night again. Pay me enough and their ashes can be shot into space or buried on the bottom of the sea floor. I will need additional time and money so I can collaborate with the appropriate professionals. The possibilities are endless.
In 2007 the Guardian News revealed Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards method of operation when it came to honoring his late father. Mr. Richards mixed cocaine with his dead dad’s ashes and then he proceeded to snort the concoction shortly after receiving them. Apparently the mixture went down relatively smoothly. His worst experience is when he unknowingly snorted strychnine with his dope. He was comatose and nearly died. I digress.
And finally, once our journey has lovingly and contemplatively been completed I will carefully escort the well-traveled jar to its final destination. A scenic waterfall, a picturesque Southern town, an abandoned church, a foreign tropical jungle, a luxurious sky scraper or the highlands of Iceland. I will hike up hills, traverse rough terrain and hack through overgrown forests. As a fully certified minister with a license from unministry.org I will solemnly walk the final path with your loved one.7 With the reverence of a priest holding the shroud of Turin as I put the jar to rest in the destination of the jar’s choosing.
I will eloquently recite unique experiences and enduring but heartfelt memories to be heard and wept over by each family member. The day Mittens came waltzing into your front door like the little queen she is and decided she was never going to leave. Her daily righteous anger and contempt for your 50 dollar kitten water fountain and 100 dollar cat bed was epic. That 100 dollar cat bed be damned because she religiously and dismissively climbed across you at 2 AM in the morning to share a spot while you slept through the night. Her daily contempt for you was palpable but her allegiance to you was iron clad. Mittens was your little ride or die. She was family. There will be a video of the ceremony which records as I read out scripture righteously and carefully. “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” The video tape and a selfie will be mailed promptly to the requested address.
Chintz fabric. Originated in 17th century India and often beautifully hand painted and sometimes glazed. However, chintz became hugely popular in late 18th and 19th century England and the quality quickly degraded. Chintz was produced quickly and became very common place. Therefore, when someone says something is "Chintzy," the object is cheap, common place and/or poorly made.
I can’t sing but I can DJ like nobody’s business. With my iMac and iTunes. “Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat…”
Quite frankly I’d bet I’m more upset than the band by fact that the Low Flying Owl’s album Elixir Vitae didn’t blow up and become widely celebrated
“Or maybe they were cops?
I think they might have been cops
But anyway, like, I was just dancin' and dancin', and
Oh no, they were cops, shit.”
The key to running a successful arms race against another country is to have an end game plan and keep an eye on management. Countries continually bust into an arms race with one another without thinking of the end game. Who do you think is going to use those left-behind-weapons when they pull out of said country Stupid? And watch management like a hawk. They can just leave with information on a CD. Not cool.
Furthermore getting our foxes out of the hen house and distancing them from the target as far as possible is of utmost importance. Add in a nice comfy chair armed with only a game controller and an unmanned combat aerial vehicle and you now possess a dismissive video game player silently taking out your competition before it’s time to eat lunch.
In my head I will be quoting the great Run the Jewels lyric from “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry”: “You can all run naked backwards through a field of dicks”
It’s pretty sweet.
I really liked this a lot, Candice. Any writing that keeps me smiling throughout is, for me, the best thing that can happen. I forgot it was you, that it was your penwomanship, very early on. That's a compliment to your engaging style and technical strength. Neat idea, too. Love footnote three: you're so right - the total tonnage of albums that I feel should have been celebrated rather than horribly overlooked could stun a team of oxen. I will return to your next piece, while undoubtedly catching up on your previous. Keep on keepin' on ol' girl.
Nicely done and enjoyable. I particularly like the idea of marking time with a minute timer of cremation ashes- or an hour glass if you really liked the deceased. Pour forth your words Candice!