“Oh bury me not on the lone prairie.
Where the coyotes howl and the wind blows free.”
Recall that song? It’s also known as The Dying Cowboy. Johnny Cash recorded it. So did Roy Rogers.
I bring up the subject of burial because Sam and I read that Elizabeth Taylor’s casket reportedly cost $11,000; just the casket. It was constructed of mahogany, without nails as is the Jewish custom. It was lined in red velvet, contained a matching red pillow and was full of flowers. Sam and I are willing to bet if Liz’s casket cost so much money, the total layout for that funeral amounted to enough spondoolicks to pay off the second mortgage on my house, maybe even the first.
Personally, I don’t want to be buried. Cremation is way cheaper and I am not partial to worms crawling in and crawling out of my putrid rotting corpse. But being buried on the lone prairie might not be so bad. I rather like the sound of the coyotes yowling at night, and at certain times of the year the wildflowers there rival anything that Liz got in her casket.
Funerals can cost about as much as you want to spend on them – like weddings (only funerals are way more permanent). I understand that Wal Mart has added inexpensive caskets and urns to its retail website. Costco apparently has been selling inexpensive caskets and urns online for about five years
I don’t want a lot of money spent on my funeral. Spending thousands of dollars to dispose of a dead person is wasteful. Taking up valuable real estate where some greedy developer could build condos is wasteful. Expecting my loved ones to pay homage to me on Memorial Day and other times of the year is ego-maniacal to the nth degree. Besides, have you seen some of the stupid stuff people leave on gravesites? Teddy bears, balloons and worse, oh my.
I asked my wife Kathleen, to deposit my ashes into a nice urn and suggested she place the urn on a bookshelf. NYET! Thumbs down on that idea. Okay, put the urn out in the garage I suggested. NYET! I hope my ashes will at least be scattered somewhere nice and won’t just wind up being tossed into the nearest dumpster. The best place I can think of to be spread out – other than the parking lot of a donut shop or on the couch in front of the TV– would be a nice horse farm somewhere or a pretty pastoral hillside.
I f I just had to be buried I’d order a gallon of margaritas to go at Bombed-to-Death-Are-Us, along with a good trashy detective novel and my slippers. I might not mind being interred in a hot sports car with a hot babe, but where could I find a hot babe willing to go along with that? It might not be so bad to be buried with Sam (he’s looking at me funny) but how would I ever take him out to pee?
No. Tis better to be spread than unhappily dead.
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