Cemetery Musings: Preparing for My Final Expenses

Oak Hill Cemetery, San Jose California

Since my wife had heart surgery on Wednesday, she became concerned with the what-ifs of our earthly existence, and figured it was time to arrange for our burials.  We already had our cemetery plots picked out and, along with our coffins, paid for, just a few yards from the graves of my parents.  However, there is more to final expenses than that.  You need a tombstone and have to pick out the type and color of granite from a wall chart, as well as a "vault," which is a metal box that encloses the casket.  The vault prevents your grave from caving in and prevents water intrusion.  There are several types of vaults to choose from, including stainless steel, copper, bronze and others.  We chose the stainless steel.  We settled on a slate-blue gray for the flat tombstone, which will be one stone for the both of us.

The cost of all this is $9,000 for the two of us, paid over five years:  $1,000 down and $150 a month to pay off the balance.  If one dies before payment is complete, the balance due for that person is forgiven.  If we both die, the entire balance is forgiven.

So when we die, our corpses will be sealed and preserved for centuries to come.  Why?  For what purpose?  I would prefer the old-fashioned way of burial, in a pine box where the remains are allowed to completely decompose back to their basic elements, perhaps adding some nutrients to the soil.  The other alternative is cremation.  As I watched the blur over the crematory's smoke stacks, i.e. the heated air carrying water vapor from burning bodies, I decided that was not for me.

Walking through the administrative offices of San Jose's Oak Hill Cemetery gave me the creeps.  Death is all around you.  Somewhere, down the halls in the back rooms, corpses are being washed, embalmed, coiffed and dressed in their Sunday best, then laid out in richly upholstered coffins for display.  A large HD screen in back of the reception desk displays the names of the deceased, the funeral services to be held, the burial dates, the chapels to be used.  A large percentage of the names were Vietnamese.

Everywhere you go, in the sales offices, the viewing rooms, the main vestibule, and even the bathrooms --  there is the cloying smell of flowers. It is a perfume that seems spread through the facility through the air conditioning system.  No doubt this has the same purpose that funeral flowers have had for millenia -- to hide the smell of death.  In older times, the smell was that of decay, but today the smell is that of formaldehyde, i.e. embalming fluid.  The smell took away any appetite I might have had.  I didn't even want to drink the bottled water they gave us.  It was "dead people's water."  Or so I imagined.

I first noticed the weird smell of a funeral when I was around seven years of age, and saw my first deceased person in a coffin -- my maternal grandfather.  I was very aware of the odor of embalming fluid, a smell that I will forever associate with funerals and death.  Which is convenient, since that's about all it is used for.

It's pretty hard to have any cheerful thoughts when visiting cemetery offices, to prepare for one's own final expenses.  You have to finally admit that you are mortal, that you are going to die.  You can ignore it and not think about it, and delay the morbid feelings that acknowledgement brings.  Let your surviving relatives worry about what to do with your body and how to pay for it.  Or, you can do as I and my Mrs did this week, make the arrangements well in advance, sparing your relatives the burden.

In spite of my morbid thoughts about this experience, I am grateful that cemetery companies exist, that morticians and coffin makers and florists and grave diggers exist.  Sending someone off on their final journey is not a pleasant task, but someone has to do it.  Now that it is settled, I plan to wait around for the Grim Reaper to show up, then punch him in the mouth and run.

Christina Taylor Green, 9, Laid to Rest in Arizona

Christina Taylor Green
September 11, 2001 - January 8, 2011

Christina Taylor Green was the youngest victim in the shooting rampage of the Arizona lunatic last Saturday.  She was laid to rest today in Tucson.

A flag recovered from the wreckage of the Twin Towers was flown at her funeral.  

Christina was born on a day of a violent attack, September 11, 2001, and left this world as the result of another, on January 8, 2011.

Read about it here.

Thoughts on a Funeral

My mother-in-law, Sally, has been laid to rest.   Her funeral was held Saturday, November 20 in St. Christopher's Catholic Church in San Jose, California.  The priest who presided was her own son, who flew in from the Philippines to deliver her eulogy and lead the services. 

I knew my mother-in-law for 37 years.  I met her on the same night that I met my future wife.  Two people, who didn't particularly like each other at first, grew to love each other in the years that followed.  Sally didn't like this white guy who she was sure was out to seduce her daughter; and the white guy (me) didn't like this combative hen who was ready to scratch my eyes out for sniffing around her prize chick.  I married her prize chick, without her permission, and then things began to improve. 

When our baby boy came along, Sally was overwhelmed by the child's perfection (as perceived from a grandmother's eyes), and came to visit him every weekend.  She just wanted to sit and stare at him.  She said he was the most beautiful child she had ever seen.  On his first birthday, Sally gave her grandson a big cake, without icing, placed on her coffee table where he could tear into it with his tiny hands, stuffing the pieces into his mouth.  I loved that she did this.  It made me realize that Sally and I were kindred spirits.

When two bloodlines mingle in a single child, it represents the juncture at which two families join together and become one.  Nothing unifies two people like a common love for the same child, a child to whom both are related, me as the father, she as the grandmother.  We became fast friends from that point on and loved each other like any natural relatives would.  And Sally didn't object when almost all of her younger daughters married Americans, one by one, adding greatly to her supply of beautiful grandchildren, several of whom (the boys) were pall-bearers at her funeral, while others (the girls) sang.

November 20, 2010, the day of interment, was rain-soaked, blustery and cold.  After the service, we followed the hearse to Oak Hill where Sally's body was placed in one of those wall tombs where many are laid to rest.  Her spot was about half way up the wall, in the middle.  I always wondered how they got coffins into those high spaces.  They use a special lift, with places on either side for workmen to stand, and raise the coffin up to the open space where it is slid head-first, on rollers, into the space.

As the coffin was lifted skyward toward its final resting place, I was struck by the sight of two of Sally's sons, one of them the priest, holding each other and sobbing loudly. Encircling the scene was a crowd of uplifted faces watching the coffin's ascent, drenched in tears and haggard with grief.  One of Sally's daughters shouted a last, emotional message: "I love you mommy!"

Sally, you were loved.

The coffin was inserted into the space, which was then sealed with a square metal plate using common white spackle. Secured over that was the decorative stone plate, bearing the name and dates of the deceased, i.e. the year of birth and the year of death. Sally’s read:

S.... T M.......

1926 - 2010

How strange it seemed to me, to see her familiar name like that:  as an inscription on a tombstone.  How odd, that a person so loved could be reduced to such brevity.

Our final act of the day was to retire to Sally's favorite restaurant, Khan's, to eat and visit with one another before departing.