We have to stop meeting like this...

Coming home from a tombstone unveiling this morning I was thinking about the whole concept of cemeteries as places to remember the dead.  The ocassion was to commemorate one of Ralph's cousins, an elderly women of 89 who died last year.  As is the custom, one year or so after death the family erects a tombstone on the grave and family and friends gather to say ritual prayers and to follow this by going back to the home of the living relations and eating smoked salmon bagels and drinking English tea with milk.  What a bizarre way to remember anyone.

The distant cousins we saw this morning are familiar and liked - we gather at least once a year for mostly funerals and go through the same motions and drink the same tea and eat the same catered bagels - this time there was added fresh fruit platters (a clear sop to the weight watchers among us). We didn't once discuss the deceased as the time for that was long over.  We caught up on family events, 'hatches, matches and dispatches', and promised earnestly to get together at other times, funerals and cemeteries being hardly conducive to party time.

I am not having such a ridiculous event following my death.  Of this, I am sure.  I am not certain that the loved ones I leave behind will take my wishes into account but I am certain of this much.  I do not want to be buried in a huge cemetery filled with other Jews lying alongside the M25 motorway.  I do not want some ungainly gravestone made of cold marble or granite engraved with meaningless platitudes or any other words that make certain they don't offend any of the family. (Do we mention the sons-in-laws, will the kids be upset if we don't name the surviving relatives on the headstone, do we use the nickname or real name, do we put the dates of their life or their deaths - you see what I mean here.) I do not want my empty bones taking up space in the earth and calling out to my family to visit me, or worse still, not visit me.  The whole palaver round death is so wrong for me. Dying may be fairly straightforward, but burial is not.

Please dispose of me in some easily, cheaply and reasonably efficient way.  Cremation is fine, ashes on the compost heap, in the bin or down the loo is also fine.  I won't be there anymore so what the hell.  I want songs sung and champagne drunk, toasts made, tears cried, but then - finished, over, kaput.  Remember me anyway you want, but not in these impersonal places of repose.

Now that that rant is out of the way, I can get ready for my friend's big birthday bash.  She is of an age and will, I'm sure throw a great party.  We will make the same sort of small talk we made this morning, but the centre of attention is thankfully still alive.  We will meet old friends we haven't seen since the last birthday celebration and vow to meet up again soon.  Same chatter, different places and people.

Certainly the food should be better.