Morbid.

I just finished a book called "Stiff" about what we could learn from cadavers. It was very interesting and engaging. There is a chapter of the book about what we do with our bodies when we die. There are many options:

1. Bury

2. Cremation

3. Donate body to Science

4. Donate body for Plastination

5. Become fertilizer

6. Float down a river on fire (my boss' preference) 

7. Be fed to Dungeness Crabs 

#1 has never been an option for me ever since I was young. I never wanted to be buried for some reason. It seems like a waste for my body to be in tact in a box on a lot of land I have to pay too much money for. 

#2 seemed ok to me, but I feel odd about my whole existence going to waste. I am just burned to ashes. You can not use my body for shit if I did that. Like my "afterlife" has no purpose. (Or at least what I believe an "afterlife" to be... that post will come later I suppose).

#3 I could donate my body to science. But the thought of my leg here, my arm there, my decapitated head shuttled off to wherever to have plastic surgeons practice on it seems, well, frankly, unromantic. 

#4 Now, when we went and saw the Body Worlds exhibit, my husband and I deeply thought about donating our bodies to this. But really, are they going to take me when most of their specimens were athletes or at least the very fit? Surely they are not going to take a chubby Asian, right? Unless I live to be 90 or die right now. So then that leaves me back to my original quandary of what to do...

#5 I would love to become fertilizer for a tree. This is my ideal of an afterlife. This is the only way I see myself "living on". There are many ways to do it. I could just be put in a shallow grave and have the maggots do their thing. I could go to Sweden and be frozen by liquid nitrogen, broken into pieces and then buried in a tree field. I have this idea of becoming a peach tree. When I was young we used to have a peach tree in our back yard and it produced the fattest, juiciest peaches I had ever eaten. I want a piece of me to be a fat juicy peach that some child will carry that memory with them throughout their whole life. 

#6 My boss has the most picturesque vision of death in my opinion. Like they do in India - put the body on a boat, light it on fire and float down the Ganges river. Thinking about it - it really sounds beautiful. Do a google search or you tube search on it and, not so much. So the thought is beautiful, something to consider. The reality is grotesque and honestly too much for me to handle. 

#7 apparently, Dungeness crabs could feast on a human body. They love us as much as we love them. I could maybe do that. I wonder if someone eats a crab that had eaten me that a piece of me is in them. Maybe they have a pecan pie later and they might become short of breath or they notice their tongue gets itchy. . .   

Now, if for some reason I die and my organs are able to be used - then that takes priority number one. Then I choose #5. 

I wonder what my fertilizer will smell like...