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Ashes to Bambi and Dust to Rocky the Flying Squirrel
“Do we all holy rites. / Let there be sung ‘Non Nobis’ and ‘Te Deum.’ / The dead with charity enclosed in clay.” -- Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.viii.128-130
Oh, yeah. When you think of reverence with regard to the passing of a loved one, you just naturally think of a funeral establishment called Holy Smoke.
In Virgilius’ The Aeneid, that masterwork of Augustan propaganda, funereal cremation is part of several Mediterranean pagan cultures. When Aeneas abandons Queen Dido after a sure-I’ll-respect-you-in-the-morning moment during a hunt (a hunt perhaps using arrows made from dead people), she flings herself onto her own funeral pyre, possibly singing “C’mon, Baby, Light my Fire.”
In The Aeneid, cremation followed by the burial of the remaining bones and ashes is so essential to the worship of the gods (we now call them film stars) that the soul of someone who is not burned and buried properly cannot be ferried by Charon across the Neches to Louisiana.
Along the eastern short of the Inland Sea the Philistines sacrificed their first-born to Moloch by throwing them, alive, into a fire, no doubt explaining to the child that this was a mother’s right to choose the autonomy of her own body.
In Nordic paganism kings and war leaders were honored to have their bodies, weapons, grave goods, a wife or two, and a dog piled onto their favorite warship with lots of kindling, and pushed out to sea in flames. Too bad about the poor dog.
In an episode of the television series Alice Flo says that she wants to be cremated and her ashes scattered over Robert Redford.
Christianity has historically preferred inhumation, possibly as a reaction to pagan usages, but has permitted cremation on occasions of mass deaths because of plagues, hurricanes, earthquakes, war, or Governor Chris Christie tripping and falling from a podium onto his audience. Because of land-use issues and population density, Christianity is now more open to cremation.
One of the finest men I ever knew left instructions for his daughter, a pilot, to scatter his ashes at coordinates that were never to be revealed to anyone else. That’s neat.
On the occasion of a lengthy visitation before the funeral of a boyhood pal I sat myself down in a pew and wondered idly why there was a cardboard box in the pew along with a Bible and a box of Kleenex. I read the label on the box – inside was all that remained of the boyhood pal.
And on yet another occasion of visitation I clumsily bumped against a table and very nearly dumped the ashes of another honored friend onto the floor. Leave it to me to make a complete ash of myself on solemn occasions.
And they were indeed solemn occasions, with loving families making genuinely reverent decisions.
But having Grandma or Grandpa shot from guns, like the childhood breakfast cereal advertised on television in the 1950s?
What is the culinary convention of using powdered relatives for hunting? Lots of folks enjoy sausage made from pork, venison, and spices, but will they like sausage made from pork, venison, and Grandpa?
Just askin’.
Will Catholics have ol’ Dad molded into Rosary beads? This would be one way for the survivors to forget ol’ Dad, just as they have forgotten the Rosary.
Fishermen could have a problem: do they skip the cremation part and have Uncle Clem cut up into bait?
Reverently, of course.
Our masters, the Chinese Communists, have been recycling dead humans for years, and will have a healthy prisoner shot to specification for an organ transplant for the world’s wealthy.
But the prisoner is recycled reverently.
As for the less wealthy among us, we can only wonder if that nice leather belt stamped “Made in China” was made by Prisoner Chang or of Prisoner Chang.
Reverently, no doubt.
How about that final hymn: “Abide with (POW!) me; fast falls (KA-BLAM!) the eventide; / the darkness (KA-BLOOEY!) deepens; Lord, with me abide.”
A toxicologist, according to a USA Today article, says that hunting with “ashes would pose less of a problem than any lead pellets historically used.” That would certainly help the priest or minister with the eulogy: “Ol’ Thad – whatever else we can say about him, he was less of a problem than lead pellets.”
A toxicologist, according to a USA Today article, says that hunting with “ashes would pose less of a problem than any lead pellets historically used.” That would certainly help the priest or minister with the eulogy: “Ol’ Thad – whatever else we can say about him, he was less of a problem than lead pellets.”
Break out the sniffle-tissues. But then from what – or from whom – are the sniffle-tissues made? Maybe from human tissue? Hmmmmmmmm?
Or perhaps from the tattered, ragged remnants of a collapsing civilization.
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