Life in the Garden

Matters of Life and Death

cremation

As Seen on TV

Greetings!

Three beautiful things:

Sunshine
Realizing you’re not as crazy as you thought
Inspiration

Lileks had a good Monday post, (see #2 TBT) mundane subjects like an adventure to the outdoor living store and highway driving. I quote:

“On the way out I saw a Summer Grilling section, with America-flag themed merchandise, and I had instant summer’s end panic. It’s the Fourth soon! Which means it’ll be over! And then it’s fall! And then it’s Winter! Repeat at an ever-hastening pace until dead!”

And I realized……I do that. Get on a loop and start to get a little anxious….about the clock. Settle down.

Urn Media Watch: Spotted on Soprano’s Sunday Night.

At Phil Leotardo’s social club, Phil hosts a celebration of what would have been his brother Billy’s 47th birthday. He places the urn holding Billy’s ashes back up above the bar – so he’ll be able to see his friends when they visit. Working himself up over the story of how his family’s name was changed from Leonardo to Leotardo (“a ballet costume”), Phil tells Butchie he’s had enough. He shouldn’t have stayed quiet in jail and he should have avenged Billy’s murder. “No more Butchie. No more of this,” he vows.

We carry this style, maybe we’ll rename: “The Leotardo”.

No.

Have a great week, might be a good night for baseball!

Days of Our Lives

Greetings! What about this crazy new urn style? Doubt we’ll add it to the mix. Most of our clients don’t want to see the ashes and prefer something a little more discreet…..

But Russell Parsons from West Virginia is the winner for most creative final instructions…..

Retired pipefitter, Army veteran and cancer survivor Russell Parsons says he’s not afraid to die and he’s got the tattoo to prove it. Inside the yellow and orange flaming tattoo on his right arm are instructions to the funeral home where he has a prepaid cremation: “Barlow Bonsall cook 1700-1800 for 2 to 3 hours.”

“It’s a recipe,” the 67-year-old widower from Hurricane, W.V., said. “It’s a recipe for cremation.” Linda Wilson, manager of Barlow-Bonsall Funeral Home and Crematorium in Charleston, W.V., said she thought Parsons was joking several weeks ago when he said he was going to have his final wishes tattooed on his arm. “I never thought he would actually do it,” she said Tuesday. She wasn’t the only one. Parsons said the tattoo artist who gave him his first and only tattoo said his request was among the craziest he’d ever received in 22 years. “I told him, ‘Well, take a look because I’m one of a kind.'”

Parsons, who survived a brush with cancer in 1999 and still deals with injuries from his Army service, said not everyone understands his attitudes about life and death. “I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of life,” he said. “I’m afraid of living and not being able to take care of myself.”

Random Notes

Three Beautiful Things:

Venus in the Western sky (check it out)
The Masters
Easter Brunch

Praise to the Holley family in San Diego for lobbying to change the Defense Dept’s policy on returning our dead soldiers. The Holley’s were horrified to discover that the body of their son would be returned to like a piece of luggage.

“My wife and I could have said nothing. We got what we wanted for Matthew and our family, but just being quiet wouldn’t be right when other people are going through the same thing.” he added. “Not enough is being done for these guys. A war hero returns to San Diego and it’s a blip on the news before people forget. These people need to be honored.”

In China, just as in the US, it’s getting too expensive to die. Last Thursday was the was the annual tomb sweeping ceremony, but state media said soaring funeral costs were leading to people complaining they can no longer afford to die, Reuters reports. In Beijing and Shanghai, a proper send-off can cost between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan ( US $1,300-$2,600), Xinhua news agency said. Funerals for family members cost the average Beijing resident three months’ salary. “Funeral costs have surged from hundreds of yuan in the 1980s to tens of thousands of yuan. I’m afraid I cannot afford my own death,” the report quoted 89-year-old Li Chengxian as saying.

For decades after the 1949 Communist takeover, China forbade burials in order to conserve badly needed land and insisted instead on cremations. The rule was poorly enforced in its vast countryside, though, and now has effectively been abandoned. Earlier this week China announced it was to outlaw the trade in tomb futures — speculating on the business of selling graves — after it bankrupted many investors, as the government steps up regulations on a lucrative but poorly regulated industry.

Funeral providers rarely charge for services but make money by marking up the cost of products, sometimes as much as 20 times the original price, and mourning relatives are loath to bargain, Xinhua said. In some areas the cost of a grave per square meter can be twice as much as an apartment. An official at the Civil Affairs Ministry criticized the practice of some cemetery owners of setting up special graveyards that offer “oversized and luxurious graves”, Xinhua said in a separate report. “It’s a severe violation of China’s funeral regulations and a waste of land resources,” it quoted the official as saying.

Some tomb owners also encroach on farmland by building groups of tombs for family members and ancestors who want to be reunited in the afterworld, the official said, condemning the practice as “outdated and superstitious”.

Tomb Sweeping, known as Ching Ming is held on the 106th day after winter solstice, and usually occurs on April 4 or 5. and is a major public festival that is generally treated as an official holiday in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is considered unlucky to conduct business on this day, and as a result many businesses will be closed and business leaders unavailable. Government agencies, banks and schools are generally closed. Traffic may be heavy and public transportation crowded, especially in areas near cemeteries. The transit system provides extra service to accommodate the crowds

Visiting the cemetery is referred to as hang san (walking the mountain). A series of activities clearing the grave site of dirt and debris, weeding around the site, and repainting inscriptions on the gravestone are together referred to as “sweeping” the grave. Wine and a variety of foods may be placed around the grave site (along with appropriate tableware such as glasses and chopsticks) as offerings to the spirit of the deceased. Eating the food that was offered to the deceased is considered good luck. Paper money is burned for use in the afterlife, candles are lit, and family members bow and kneel in respect. Many of today’s offerings may be simple, consisting of incense, paper money and flowers. Families may also set off firecrackers to drive evil spirits away from the grave.

Today’s tip: Study the I Ching

You Can’t Make It Up

Greetings!

Sorry to hear of the passing of John Stone, didn’t know the man personally, however, we had just discovered his blog. We didn’t always agree with his viewpoint, but it made for interesting reading. RIP. Chatter has the story.

Beam me up! The ashes of Star Trek’s Scotty and one of NASAs first astronauts are once more bound for the final frontier, this time aboard a privately-built rocket to launch from New Mexico April 27th.

Keith Richards and his dad were very close. Keith admits to adding some of his dad’s ashes to a line of “blow” and snorting. Nice. Update.

In a statement posted on the Rolling Stones Web site, Richards said:

”The complete story is lost in the usual slanting! The truth of the matter is that I planted a sturdy English Oak. I took the lid off the box of ashes and he is now growing oak trees and would love me for it!!! I was trying to say how tight Bert and I were. That tight!!! I wouldn’t take cocaine at this point in my life unless I wished to commit suicide.”
Today’s tip: Eat, drink, and be very merry.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Greetings!

In social settings, when asked what it is we do for a living, we simply state that we have a website called urngarden.com and toss it back. Despite our enthusiasm for the service we provide, sometimes the reaction is that we sell Amway. Nobody wants it.

How about the guy in Oklahoma City that sells skulls? Skulls Unlimited bills itself as the world’s leading supplier of osteological specimens. He has a storage unit full of human skulls, most imported from China. Started as a home based business, he boiled skulls on his stove.

Or the White Ladies who have started a business that would spread the cremated remains of clients over western Montana publicly owned wild mountain peaks and flower-studded meadows.

For $390 the White Ladies will scatter the ashes and provide a ceremony, a photograph, journal notes and Global Positioning System coordinates of the final resting place. Ten percent of the cost would be donated to groups who work to protect wild lands.

But the Forest Service has long had a firm policy against commercial scattering, said Gordon Schofield, the group leader for land use here in Region I. If ashes are scattered “the land takes on a sacredness, and people want to put up a marker or a plaque, Mr. Schofield said, then they oppose activities they do not see as compatible with the site as a resting place.

Don’t ask. Don’t Tell.

But this is a bad day at work:

Perhaps you’ve experienced that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing an account worth $38 billion.

That’s what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account — one of Alaska residents’ biggest perks — and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.

There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense had failed: backup tapes were unreadable.

“Nobody panicked, but we instantly went into planning for the worst-case scenario,” said Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Amy Skow. The computer foul-up last July would end up costing the department more than $200,000.

Over the next few days, as the department, the division and consultants from Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. labored to retrieve the data, it became obvious the worst-case scenario was at hand.

The ultimate back up: The paper trail.

Last October and November, the department met its obligation to the public. A majority of the estimated 600,000 payments for last year’s $1,106.96 individual dividends went out on schedule, including those for 28,000 applicants who were still under review when the computer disaster struck.

Easter Week Tattoo:

Today’s tip for better living: Get a really good foot massage!