If Words Could Talk
By Bill E. Brock

In Memory of

I read that how civilized a society is can be measured by how it treats it dead. Well, we really seem to care for our dead. We may not care quite as much when they’re living—but let them die and the sky’s the limit.

Pre-planning for death isn’t high on most people’s agenda but there are steps that can be taken. Some of them are quite unique.

You can donate your entire body to science or any part of it that you found to be interesting. However, many universities are picky (literally), so you have to plan in advance or you may get a rejection letter.

Organ donation is a favorite because your blood freeways, food tunnels, vital organs, hearing bones, and eyes can be used by another human instead of becoming bacteria fast food.

"Donate, then cremate" is the slogan to remember.

Commercial companies will take your body if you pay the transportation cost. (Note: Unless you fold the deceased tightly, they won’t fit into the required UPS box size and you’ll have oversize charges.)

Some people panic at the idea they may have to speak at a memorial service (this is where the deceased is not present to take notes) or a eulogy where the dearly departed is lying down in front of you. There are companies that will write the comments for you, then create a poem and provide live mourners who dab their eyes at appropriate points in your script. This is worth keeping in mind especially if you find it difficult to fill more than seven seconds with nice things to say (other than, "He was a great bowler and led our team to first place in the beer puking contest every Tuesday at the Stick Your Fingers In and Pull Your Fingers Out Bowling Emporium in Moorpark").

There are environmental cemeteries with no headstones. You’re returned to the earth in a natural environment marked with flowers, a bush, tree, pile of stones or a few scattered leaves. Unobtrusive is the motto here. Somewhat like a mini Yosemite.

An Internet company will install a "live" camera in your casket and provide a secure Website where "friends" can watch you do what comes naturally for several years. (I didn’t make this up.)

The next two require a bit more visualization. There’s a cemetery with video monitors inserted in the headstones. (I guess one could have a footstone.) Remember those BIG leather books in fairy-tale movies where the pages turned themselves? Those are available with a video monitor. At the push of a button, just like at a museum, you can watch an info video where the star never ages.

Personally, I’m waiting for the virtual reality 3-D hologram. I’m not going there but you can use your imagination.

The Web offers perpetual memorial sites where you can view pictures and videos, write comments and listen to the "voice from the past" say, "Can you hear me now? Good."

Maybe you want to keep in touch. You can send e-mails for as long as you want from the other side. This really could add punch to "You’ve Got Mail" from guess who. Plus, phone messages can be sent if you really want to freak someone.

Naturally, your cremains (ashes) can be placed in "unique" containers, made into jewelry or glow- in-the-dark stuff so folks always know where you are at 11 p.m.

You can be mixed with cement and shaped into an eternal memorial reef and dropped into the ocean with the exact longitude and latitude of your new fishes’ condominium priced from $1,000.

Fork over $75 for a seat on a charter boat to watch remains (which you can’t see) get dumped in the ocean for about $1,000. Plus, you get other souvenir items and a free barf bag.

Go in the other direction and play among the stars. For $1,000, one gram of you is launched into space; $5,300 and you orbit Earth for a bit longer; $12,500 places you in lunar orbit or shot into deep space at warp speed.

Stay on Earth and freeze your buns cryogenically. You can freeze your entire body or just your head in Scottsdale, Ariz. in the hopes that science will cure whatever ailed you and you can be rejuvenated in the year 3001. Imagine what music will be like then.

The Swedes have patented a flash-freeze method that makes your remains brittle. Then, sound waves smash you into powder. The company suggests that you be planted in a flowerpot because you will make great compost.

The Germans can plasticize your body or parts thereof in essentially the same stuff sold at craft stores in which you embed flowers and insects. You could be one BIG paperweight or even a one-of-a-kind coffee table.

Finally, there’s a society that believes that the Shroud of Turin was used to cover the body of Jesus Christ. It’s advocating that DNA be removed and Jesus Christ is cloned (through––get this––Immaculate Conception).