Making an Exit

by Sarah Murray

  A few mariachi bands stroll around looking for customers who might pay a few pesos to have their relative’s favorite song played by the grave. To save money, one family has brought along a boom box. It sits on top of the grave cranking out dozens of tunes, all for the price of a cassette tape and a couple of batteries. Meanwhile, at one of the wealthier tombs, a family has enlisted the services of a preacher who, with the help of two assistants and a mariachi band, is conducting a private Mass.

  Some just seem to be enjoying the fine weather and the presence of others. At one grave, an old man and his wife sit opposite each other on the benches on either side of their family tomb, silent, motionless, and expressionless. Elsewhere, whole families are perched on graves, chatting and eating. Today, the living outnumber the dead and it’s hard to see the tombstones for people and flowers.

  I don’t fit in here. I’m the only one without jet-black hair and a set of relatives under the turf. But no one seems to mind. People smile warmly or simply ignore me as I wander about. By the end of the afternoon, as the sun falls behind Oaxaca’s surrounding hills, rich golds, deep purples, and warm ochres spread across the cemetery. People start slowly packing up their cooler bags, buckets, and watering cans as they bid their relatives good-bye—that is, until next year.

  * * *

  On my last day in Oaxaca, a strange thing happens. I’m walking past the church of San Felipe Neri, not far from my hotel. The doors are open, so I mount the steps to go inside. The exterior of San Felipe Neri has a spectacular baroque façade in golden sandstone with ornate columns topped by florid ionic capitals, cherub heads with angel wings, and a crowned figure above the entrance representing Filippo de Neri, a sixteenth-century Italian priest.

  Since I first admired this glorious frontage, I’ve been anxious to have a look at the interior. This, it turns out, is rather unusual. Art Nouveau murals lead up to a gilded apse carved with figures of saints. At its center—adding a dash of color to the dusty carvings—is a figure of the Virgin, who, in a bright turquoise nylon robe, wouldn’t look out of place among the Day of the Dead skeleton dolls.

  But in the end, I don’t spend much time looking at the décor. I’m more interested in what’s going on in the church, which is full of worshippers. A service is underway. Priests stand at the altar, folding and refolding pieces of linen over a challis (Catholic rituals always look to me as if someone is doing a tiny laundry service) and an electric organ hammers out a solemn hymn. As the music draws to a close, the congregation rises and people start shaking hands and hugging each other.

  Then I realize what kind of service this is. In front of the altar resting on a low table is a polished steel box with silver handles. This is a funeral. My heart misses a beat. I’m surprised at how shocking it is to see the real thing after the vaudeville theatricalities of Oaxaca’s nightly revelries.

  As the service ends, I quickly leave the church, not wanting to get in the way of the departing mourners. Moving to a respectful distance across the street, I watch the pallbearers bring the coffin out into the sunlight and down the steps to the sidewalk, where a large silver hearse is waiting. For a while, people mill around, talking quietly and shaking hands. One woman hugs another in a tight embrace as her friend sobs on her shoulder. The look on her face is one of utter desperation.

  I step aside to let a group of small children pass. They’re carrying balloons, wearing skeleton outfits, and their faces are painted white with panda-black skeleton eyes. As those playing the dead cross paths with those mourning the dead, the collision could not be more jarring. The two seem to have nothing to do with each other. They are strangers speaking different languages, inhabiting different worlds.

  * * *

  A few months after my trip to Oaxaca, I visit Dorset to help Sam clear out the house. As a family, we seem to have spent much of our time engaged in this activity. Like garden weeds, possessions always seem to multiply, and every so often we cull what’s no longer needed. It’s something Sam and I have always enjoyed doing together, leaving us with a feeling that it’s not just the house that’s a little clearer—it’s our heads, too.

  This time, though, it’s not as simple. Sam’s new house next door is finished, and in a month’s time Kate and Ian and the boys will be moving into Summerfields. They’ll probably use any furniture Sam doesn’t need, but we want to get everything else out before they arrive. It’s time-consuming work, sifting through books and ornaments. We carefully pick over each item, and for anything we don’t want, we try to think of some friend or relative to whom it might be useful or would bring pleasure.

  One day, Sam and I get a break when my uncle and aunt come over for lunch. I’m extremely fond of Alastair, my father’s brother, and his wife, Monica. As children, Kate and I spent many summer holidays with the four cousins in their big farmhouse, riding horses and lingering over family meals around the kitchen table. Alastair was a warm, fatherly figure. I never felt too far from home when he was around.

  But now, as he walks through the door, I realize I’m totally unprepared for the effect his presence has on me—he and Fa were always very alike in looks, though Alastair had a larger frame and rounder features. But with age he’s come to resemble Fa even more closely. And I’d forgotten how much his voice—oh, how I love that voice—is exactly like Fa’s, with its quiet confidence and soft tone. The voice the brothers shared was an educated one, extremely well spoken, and full of generosity and warmth. For the first few moments after Alastair and Monica arrive, I can barely breathe, let alone follow the conversation. I’m too busy gazing at this man who’s so like my father and, even more astonishingly, is talking with his voice.

  A couple of years before Fa died, I recorded a phone conversation with him. I made the tape, as I told him at the time, because I wanted to capture some of his childhood recollections for a bit of family research I was conducting. When I found out his illness was terminal, I labeled the tape and put it safely away in a drawer. I haven’t listened to this tape since he died. Perhaps it’s because I fear hearing his voice will bring back the pain of losing him.

  Now I’m hearing his voice again. Part of me wants to cry. Yet I’m also filled with immense happiness at seeing those familiar facial features in motion and hearing that voice. I’m reminded of the comfort and security I so often felt when observing my father in animated discussion. The world was safe as long as he was in it. As I gaze at Alastair, I realize that we can revisit our difuntos without decorated altars or bone-turning ceremonies—but through the living people whose genes, relatives, friends, and memories they share.

  10

  The Final Chapter

  SMALL PACKAGES, NEATLY TIED

  In Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, a “mortuary hostess” at the Whispering Glades funeral home tries to persuade Denis Barlow to buy a “Before Need Arrangement.” The hostess assures him that there’s nothing morbid or dangerous in giving some thought to this topic. On the contrary, she says, fear of death can cause “vital energy” to “lag prematurely” and “earning capacity” to diminish. She encourages him to: “Choose now, at leisure and in health, the form of final preparation you require, pay for it while you are able to so do, shed all anxiety.”

  I’m not at all happy with the idea of leaving this world. I enjoy my presence in it far too much. So if those Terror Management theorists want a candidate who can speak for them at conferences as a living example of their hypothesis, they can sign me right up and I’ll happily talk about the ways in which I’d like to live on—whether by leaving my money to charity or my books on the bookshelves. Certainly, the idea of creating some sort of legacy does seem to provide solace in the face of my undesirable but undeniable shelf life.

  Of course, we don’t always have to arrange our own legacy to live on. Often it happens by itself, even in something as simple as a phrase. My friend Gay Firth had one I’ll always remember. We were neighbors in London, and whenever we met for dinner, I’d offer to accompany her home afterward.
She’d always insist she’d be perfectly fine on her own. “Darling,” she would say emphatically, “I promise I won’t mug anyone on the way.” I stole this line and I now use it on my friends. Like the citizens of Sagada when they invoke their dead ancestors, I think of her every time I say it.

  In her sixties, Gay was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer. She spent her last months in London’s Royal Marsden Hospital. There, she spent the hours meticulously planning her memorial, from the hymns and readings to the flowers, guest list, and reception. When her notebook was lost during the move to another hospital room, she was inconsolable. It coincided with a worsening of her condition. But for me, this event, more than anything else, marked the start of her final decline.

  For Gay, thinking about the readings and music for her memorial provided a welcome distraction from the endless rounds of tests and drugs that ultimately proved futile. And even though she lost her notebook with all the details in it, after she died, a close friend who’d been in on much of the decision making painstakingly reconstructed the service from memory. In the end, Gay got the send-off she’d wanted.

  Planning your own funeral is not such an eccentric thing to do. My father, in his own way, did it. And for someone who claimed death required no fuss, he certainly thought a lot about it. Many years before he died, he wrote a few short verses about dying—poetry and art once again expressing the inexpressible. Death even became part of his filing system, in his carefully labeled “How to End It!” folder.

  When General MacArthur planned his exit, he set down details such as which uniform he should wear when lying in state. Others, like Gay, have wanted to select their guests. John Osborne, the British playwright who died in 1994, left instructions that a note should be posted on the church door bearing a list of those who should not be admitted. More than a decade’s work went into the optimistically code-named “Operation Hope Not,” the plans for the funeral of Winston Churchill, and some say he had a hand in the arrangements.

  Happily, setting it all down is getting easier. On a Web site called mywonderfullife.com, you can plan your own funeral and store all the details online. After setting up an account, you create an online “book” with virtual pages where you name up to six “angels” to carry out your wishes and then send them an e-mail request to accept or decline the responsibility. Then you can specify whether you want to be cremated, buried, or perhaps have your body donated to medical science. You can write your own headstone and obituary, upload photos, leave letters for people to read after you’ve gone, and suggest music and readings for the memorial.

  Creating the site was the idea of Sue Kruskopf, a Minneapolis-based advertising executive, and her friend Nancy Bush, whose fifty-three-year-old husband, John, died of cancer. After going through the experience of arranging his funeral, Sue and Nancy wanted to take some of the guesswork out of the whole process.

  It’s a sensible idea. For while we’re often reluctant to contemplate our own deaths, leaving a few instructions as my father did relieves friends and families of much of the angst and uncertainty surrounding our departures (not to mention potential rows over everything from the choice of music at the funeral to where to bury the remains).

  But it also seems to me that for those of us suffering from “mortality salience,” devising an appropriate send-off provides some small consolation for the fact that the one thing we’d most like to control—the end of life—we cannot. Waugh’s hostess may be overstating it when she says funeral planning helps us “shed all anxiety,” but perhaps picturing what will happen in the aftermath of death (our favorite music echoing down a church aisle, our ashes streaming out from a plane above Mount Everest) allows us to look ahead to a time when, although we’re gone, our shadow lingers for a brief moment on earth.

  I haven’t thought much about music or reading. But I’ve now got clearer ideas about what I want to have happen to my remains. As stated earlier, I DO NOT want to be embalmed. Do not bury me either. Going back to nature is all very well, but I’ve acquired too many images of putrefying cadavers on this journey to contemplate interment as an option.

  Of course, that means my lovely Ghanaian Empire State Building coffin won’t be used for its intended purpose. In any case, it’s far too beautiful an object simply to be left to rot underground. I’m thinking that, with a few shelves fitted inside, it would make a great cocktail cabinet, particularly in an Art Deco–style interior. Or perhaps a museum would like to have it.

  Then there’s cremation. Cremation is quick and efficient—it was my father’s choice, after all. Some have even found it inspiring, as George Bernard Shaw did in the days when you could follow the coffin to the furnace. In a 1913 letter, the British playwright describes his reaction to his mother’s cremation: “The violet coffin moved again and went in feet first. And behold! The feet burst miraculously into streaming ribbons of garnet coloured lovely flame, smokeless and eager, like Pentecostal tongues, and as the whole coffin passed in it sprang into flame all over; and my mother became that beautiful fire.”

  As I’ve found out, however, cremation with its smoke and carbon emissions is not the most environmentally friendly way to leave this world. Still, perhaps there’s a third way in which I can dispose of my “organic matter.” It’s a method that combines being returned to nature by burial with having ashes to scatter. It’s an alternative to earth and fire—water. And, from what I’ve learned, it appears to be remarkably gentle on the environment.

  In alkaline hydrolysis (a process one company is calling “resomation,” based on the Greek word resoma, which means “rebirth”), an alkaline solution is used to accelerate the natural decomposition of a body. In a dissolvable silk shroud, the corpse is inserted into a stainless steel pressure vessel, which weighs the corpse and adds the appropriate amount of alkali and water. Once the liquid is heated, breakdown of the “organic matter” gets going.

  After about three hours, all that’s left are the bone remains, which are put into a cremulator and turned into a fine white ash. The process uses far less energy than cremation and creates no harmful emissions. After treatment the liquid can be used as fertilizer, and hip replacements or pacemakers emerge in perfect condition so can be recycled.

  It’s early days, and who knows whether it will catch on or not, but resomation seems to provide an appealing alternative to burial and cremation. The whole thing has a more natural, gentle feel than cremation. “Think of it as the last hot bath you’ll ever take,” one proponent of the process told me when I asked him about how it worked.

  Of course, even if I’m resomated, my body will require some sort of container to transport it to the site of the pressure vessel. Here, I’ll follow my father’s example and go for a cardboard box or something equally simple—perhaps one of those flat-pack self-assembly versions from the EveryBody Coffins company. I’ve watched the video on the company’s Web site and it really does look easy to snap together. It takes less than two minutes and requires no nails, screws, or tools—rather like a very basic Meccano kit. It costs about $150, and I like the idea that if my friends, or anyone else who happens to be around, want to decorate it, they can. If I’d known about these at the time, I’d have bought one for Fa.

  Like my father, I’m not really bothered about who (if anyone) shows up for the resomation, although, unlike him, I won’t proscribe the gathering of friends and relatives who want to have a party or hold a ceremony of some kind to mark my departure. But, as with cremation, that’s just the first step. Cremation and resomation are like double burials—the “rites of secondary treatment” documented by anthropologists. As Robert Hertz wrote, cremation is “usually neither a final act, nor sufficient in itself; it calls for a later and complementary rite.”

  This, of course, is the scattering. And this is where it gets interesting. Liberated from the constraints of a burial ground and freed from worries about the need to dispose quickly of a rapidly rotting corpse, you can pick somewhere meaningful as your final r
esting place and have yourself scattered at a time that suits everyone.

  The other great advantage of being resomated is that, as with cremated remains, you can divide up the leftovers—in this case, pure white ash. For me, this is particularly good news. I’ve been struggling to choose a single place for my remains from all the destinations I’ve visited, lived in, and loved. But with a decent supply of calcium dust, I can create an itinerary. I can spread myself thinly.

  Of course, my plan relies on willing volunteers. But this is the whole point. I’m thinking that the distribution of my remains could be the reason others—family, friends, acquaintances, or strangers—get to see some of the places I’ve seen and have new experiences of their own along the way. And like Miss Vincent-Jones, who left a sum of money to my friend Tom for a “fine dinner,” I’m going to set aside some funds to pay for it.

  Volunteers need only a small sample of my resomation dust. They may have their own ideas about how to transport the tiny corporeal parcels that were once part of me. But I have one suggestion—those clear acrylic Muji pots for holding pills and other small items. They suit my aesthetic—stylish but neat—and with lids that screw on tightly, they’re eminently practical. I’ve traveled with them for years. They hold my earrings, earplugs, and headache tablets. They might as well be used for my last journeys.

  The question of how to organize all this and who does the scattering is more complicated. Travel is expensive, and while there will be no shortage of my ash, there might be limits to my cash. What’s more, if there’s a rush of applicants to participate in my scheme, which ones do I choose?

  The solution may be to devise some sort of competition, judged by me, or by the executors of my will, if I’m no longer around. Like applicants for a fellowship or grant, would-be volunteers could write an essay or make a video stating why they want to go on such a journey and what they hope to get out of it. And, of course, those who want to fund their own trips would be more than welcome to a scoopful of my remains. Once I’ve figured out the details, I’ll post it on my Web site—or perhaps leave the instructions on mywonderfullife.com.