Alternate Career Universes

I just finished Remember Me by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, a sort of update on Jessica Mitford’s American Way of Death, not so acerbically anti-funeral industry but with lots of interesting titbits.

I’d make a good funeral director, I realize. These people are now called upon to be events planners as baby boomers age and want personalized sendoffs, not the wake-funeral-interment patterns of the past. Families don’t want ashen-faced purveyors of small kindnesses, they want some creativity to come alive while they are in a state of numbed shock. They want someone to take charge, make something happen that will be a gift to the living and a heartfelt tribute to the dead. They don’t want expensive going-through-the-motions (and the latter can, my friends, be REALLY expensive).

As a former denizen of Mount Auburn Cemetery, I warmed to this project. It’s silly, of course. I will never be a funeral director. But I could: I have the right combination of empathy, organizational skills, zest for throwing parties in other people’s houses, and fascination with, let’s face it, death. There are now death midwives and once-in-a-lifetime marriers (we had one for our own wedding, the Reverend Doctor Nicole Honey). If you need a once-only funeral director, send me an email…