Have you seen these commercials where elderly people talk with their family members about the arrangements they’ve made for their funeral expenses?
It’s great to imagine that there are people at such an advanced stage of spiritual development and of such robust psychological health, even though I never met them.
One of my High School teachers once decided to interrupt class with a long speech about how important it is to arrange for you own funeral so that your loved ones don’t have to do it for you. I think she was in the middle of arranging the funeral of someone who had not done that.
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A very few insurance companies offer somewhat over-priced, low value policies to cover these expenses. A large number of seniors don’t have assets that can be used for death expenses, or want their assets to go the children or grandchildren, and they are the targets for these policies. What’s appalling is the amount of money burial requires. Cremation is much cheaper.
There are also inane state laws that require hiring an ambulance to transport remains across state lines, even if the remains are ashes. Happily, this is one of a number of laws that are unenforceable.
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My paternal grandmother actually had my father drive me past her burial spot, which she’d picked herself and had already fully paid off.
She also had enough willpower so that, when she felt death coming to her on December 31st, she lived just enough hours long enough to get an extra year on her tombstone marker. Though, being a classic Jewish grandmother, I suspect part of this was borne out of more than a healthy willingness to face death when it came… “See, that’s where I will go, I want you to make sure you’ll visit me, don’t leave me all alone like you do now, I’ll be cold in my grave, but I’ll know if my own son never comes to see me, even in death!”
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I can’t imagine meeting any people, of any age, who appear in any commercial because, of course, they’re not real and never will be. They’re the brain children of young, not very well educated people employed by advertising agencies to sit around together in endless “creative” meetings in order to come up with something “fresh” and “new” that will keep the client from moving his lucrative billings to another agency. Turn off the sound and go check your blog for comments and/or pings until the commercial is over!
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GREAT advice! :-))))))))))))
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It is a good thing to do. If you realize this you do not even have to be that psychologically healthy to do it.
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Both of my parents discussed this with me and my siblings some years before they died.
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This is really great. And very enlightened.
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My great-grandfather in Indiana bought a bunch of cemetery plots in the local churchyard, just to be safe. The only son who stayed nearby (my grandfather) joined a different church. The interstate was built some 25 miles north, and the church became part of a dying community. The church is still going and several of my relatives have opted to use the plots, so every now and then we make the schlepp to what is now the middle of nowhere to pay our respects. There are still plots leftover, though, and whenever there’s a family gathering, my uncles can be seen going around the room asking if anyone wants dibs on any of them. At the very end of her life, my mother, to everyone’s surprise, abandoned her long-held plan to be cremated and asked for one of them. My aunt, in whose house my mother was getting hospice care, hustled me off to the funeral home to select a coffin and funeral package well in advance of her death. It kind of annoyed me at the time, but then I was later glad not to have to think about it while in the first flush of getting used to my mother being gone.
My father made plans early in life to donate his body to medical science. I don’t know whether or not he knew that meant “being dissected by medical students,” but I carried through with his wishes. The office at the Rutgers medical school that handles donations gave the impression of being run by extraterrestrials who had read a handbook on earthling attitudes towards death but were otherwise winging it, but it worked out.
So it doesn’t seem the least bit strange to me that people think these things through ahead of time. Why wouldn’t they?
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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