When i am dead

I haven't heard that Christina Rossetti poem in years. Mother used to read it to us when we were little...which is a little disturbing now that I think of it.

I've always said when I'm dead put in in a Hefty bag and leave me out at the curb on bulky trash day.

(after they take any body parts they can use, or experiment on)

You just want to make those poor folk searching for cans and bottles get a shock when they gut the bag open.

That's their problem.

I won't care, I'll be dead.

By the way, one of my favorite books is "Being Dead" by one of my favorite authors, Jim Crace.

A must read.

That's what I said to the lady who voiced concern about how to get in my home when I'm dead.

She said (in the midst of creating terrible scenarios of what might happen to me) "But what if you're dead, how will we get in?"

I looked at her and told her "Sweetness, I'd be dead, it wouldn't matter."

Her response was "Oh."

In a rush this weekday morning,
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
Where my parents are buried
Side by side under a smooth slab of granite.

Then, all day long, I think of him rising up
To give me that look
Of knowing disapproval
While my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.

~Billy Collins

My sister's husband told me that he wants to be stuffed, holding a coffee mug, and left sitting at the kitchen table. That way my sister could continue her one-sided conversations as if nothing happened.

Wasn't there some movie or story or something where the woman had her husband sitting dead at his desk at the office, and she collected a few more paychecks?

you are so warm-hearted.

Two years away and that's all you've got to say?

No word, no message?

We've all been worried sick!

愿来世可追
闲来无事，译着玩！

When I am dead, my dearest, ­ 译文： 吾若去，君莫悲吟

Sing no sad songs for me: ­ 坟畔无须名花贵树遮阴

Plant thou no roses at my head, ­ 但葬于青冢

Nor shady cypress tree: ­ 幽幽碧草,纷繁细雨

Be the green grass above me ­ 念此后, 相思相忘

With showers and dewdrops wet; ­ 只凭君意

And if thou wilt, remember, ­ 恨今世别离

And if thou wilt, forget. ­ 脉脉斜影，绵绵雨丝

I shall not see the shadows, ­ 难再触及

I shall not feel the rain; ­ 夜莺泣血惜难闻

I shall not hear the nightingale ­ 暮光里几梦回

Sing on, as if in pain; ­ 或相忘，或相忆

And dreaming through the twilight ­ 愿来世可追

That doth not rise nor set, ­

Haply I may remember, ­

And haply may forget. ­

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" -
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all."
That is not it, at all.

... from The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

I can't see any reason to assume that after I die things will be any different than they were before my birth. Indeed, I can't imagine that there will be an "I" to suffer a state of death, unless we assume that to be the "soul" that we acquired upon birth....Nah!

T'weren't the cough wot carried 'im off,
T'was the coffin they carried 'im off in.

How about attending board meetings for a few hundred years?


www.authorandrewkincaid.com/our-weird-world/the-strange-will-of-jeremy-bentham

So?

What's wrong with having them harvest what they need, and tossing the rest?

Yeah, I guess it is warm hearted to be willing to give whoever needs a part or a piece of you, regardless of who they are.

In reality, they'll probably just take cells for experiments, or organs for disection during a medical class.

We like to fool ourselves thinking our heart or kidney is going to going to some sainted person, or a mommy or daddy so they don't leave their kiddies behind.
Even if an organ does go to another person, that's no guarantee that the recipient isn't some unpleasant soul. What difference does it make? You'll be dead.

All that poetry?
It's just words.

dying ain't pretty.