Cremate Me?

"Setting the body on fire may be a little melodramatic, but then again, so am I. Why should I be permanently muted once I’m gone — while I still have a mouth on my face."

Despite the following thoughts I’ve scribbled down, I rarely think about death. Not in the far into the future sense, i.e., thinking about what — if anything — happens next. Or legacy stuff about how I want to be remembered.

The only reason I’ve thought about it at all lately is that I need to have my estate stuff updated. It’s been about 20 years. I hate dealing with that administrative crap, but it’s time.

Alongside that process, practical concerns arise. Beyond distributing chattel and codifying instructions for Do-Not-Resuscitate orders, what about the corporal? Me. My physical body; what to do with my skin and bones.

There’s a great scene in Kill Bill: Volume II where “The Bride,” Uma Thurman, is trapped in a coffin — buried alive. She was given a tiny flashlight, and once she wriggles out of the rope knot she’s confined by, she shines it at the top of the coffin and starts using her martial art skills to punch her away out of the box. It’s a quintessential Quentin Tarantino scene.

But for the dead, there are no “Pai Mei” punches. Because you’re dead. All dressed up and nowhere to go. Six feet of dirt between you and a grid of gravestones. I’m not claustrophobic, but that’s still a tight squeeze. It just seems creepy to me.

Cremation, on the other hand, blows up that problem. Literally.

Setting the body on fire may be a little melodramatic, but then again, so am I. Why should I be permanently muted once I’m gone — while I still have a mouth on my face. If I’m going to be silenced, let’s just wipe the whiteboard clean altogether. A big Johnny Cash Ring of Fire sounds like just the ticket.

Of course, there is the Jewish thing. Though I’m a Reform Jew, bordering on the secular, I’m still a pretty proud one. I’ve written, spoken and advocated on behalf of Jewish pride, survival and Israel since I was in my early 20s.

Bar mitzvah day, 1980.

If you do some research on how cremation is perceived within the Jewish faith, the majority of viewpoints are negative. For example, there are arguments on behalf of allowing the soul to gradually separate from the body, which can only happen if the corpus is intact. There are also comparisons of cremation to pagan rituals which the Torah prohibits Jews from practicing.

But like many things that go back to the book, there are variances in text that human beings take different interpretations from. There’s one from the very first volume that stands out to me, where God states:

“For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)

Good enough for me. Plus, my favorite thing about the Jewish faith is that questioning everything is a positive. Religion is didactic by nature. But Jews have always questioned… everything. It is the only way that a people who comprise .2% of humanity are continuously able to achieve things that change the world for the better.

Okay, so, we’re going to light a match and turn me into sprinkles. Only question is, where should I have my people sprinkle my sprinkles. Well, it just so happens that I have thought about this before.

Once every several years, I take a drive from Phoenix up through California on the Pacific Coast Highway (SR 1), making stops at La Jolla, Santa Monica, Avila Beach, San Luis Obispo, Nepenthe restaurant along Big Sur and then on to the Bay Area to visit old friends.

The first time I took that roadtrip, I was so struck by one random sight hat I turned my car around and parked it on the shoulder. On the coastline side of the street was a row of about 20 old mailboxes, sitting above a few orange flowers and overlooking the ocean. There were no houses anywhere nearby; just a road that led up higher into the mountains. I pictured quiet, private, peaceful houses whose residents walked down the trail each day to grab their mail, and look at the spectacular Pacific.

At the time, I stopped and snapped a few images of the setting, I romanticized living in one of those houses and writing every day. Sort of like Chevy Chase in the last scene of Seems Like Old Times. It definitely appealed to the reclusive side of me. If I didn’t need so much social connection, it might have been the perfect late-life plan.

But once this life has run its course, I think my dust might be very happy along that stretch of Big Sur.

Peace is an elusive thing in this hyper-kinetic life. A little seaside sunshine during postgame sounds pretty good to me.

MICHAEL GOLDEN is the founder of JEWDICIOUS and The Golden Mean — where he converts ‘hidden lessons’ into active wisdom.

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