LET’S FACE IT NOW

I spent this past winter consistently sick. Annoying but not particularly deadly–although someone somewhere seems to differ. I received a pamphlet titled “Let’s Face It Now” in the mail with an offer to buy a cemetery plot for $45 a month. The brochure assures me that once paid “you own your property forever.” I suppose that’s meant to be reassuring–no one can dig me up and chuck me in a pauper’s pit–but considering that I’ll be, you know, dead, I’m not sure I’ll care. I’m pretty sure I won’t care. Nope. Won’t care. I won’t even know.

The mailing was addressed to “Mr. and Mrs.” Curious Crumb, which is odd, since there’s only one of us and we’re neither Mr. nor Mrs. There are teasing questions meant to, I suppose, send me into a tizzy of death-preparation: “What 6 phone calls must be made?” (Can one make phone calls posthumously?). “How about lawyers fees?” (Can lawyers collect fees posthumously?).

The photographs show bland and formally dressed couples on site admiring the beds of blooming tulips, a memorial to the Declaration of Independence, and a large fountain banked by two columns. (“Do you need a will?”). One couple is staring at a wall. I’m guessing that this wall has something to do with ashes but it just looks like a wall. A boring, brown wall. And there’s a man and a woman staring at it. (“How do you claim benefit payments?” is what at least one of them is thinking).

The accompanying letter is on stationery that’s topped with a logo designed sometime in the 1950s. The company is Pinelawn® Memorial Park and Garden Mausoleums. Their tag line is “The Largest In the East.” Is that meant to be comforting? Lots of company? Never be lonely in death? We won’t run out of space?

Regardless of that fact that I don’t intend on dying anytime soon, and have nothing to leave anyone anyway (“What does survivor do with will?”), the fact that Pinelawn® is located on Long Island pretty much put the last nail in that coffin. Yeah, let’s face that: I don’t want to live on Long Island when I’m alive, and I don’t want to be stuck there when I’m dead either.