Things My Kids Don't Find Funny..

Hey, we went to the "Pizza and Pre-planning" party at the funeral home the other day and learned a few things:

1. Talking about our funerals is easier for seniors than the younger generation. (Our youngest had a frown on his face when I told about this. ) A couple decades ago my brother in-law related going home to visit his parents and his dad taking him aside to tell him he had something to show him. He then took him to the cemetery and showed him the tombstone they had selected. I think it shocked Mike. His dad had spent his life cutting granite at a local quarry and this was a natural thing for them to do as senior citizens. The kids are not in the same place.
The pre-planning is easier for us to do than them to do during a stressful time.

2. The funeral home seminar was about cremation. I smiled everytime she referred to the "cremains". It just brought to mind craisins.

3. I had never heard of a columbarium. It is a memorial wall where the cremated urns are kept with engraving of persons name, dates, etc. (Think Viet Nam war memorial, although there are no remains there.) We liked the idea of above ground storeage, but this funeral home has them set in a natural prairie grass field. In a dry, drought year it looked a bit like weeds gone wild. That would never do for my fastidious lawn-keeper husband and I don't like sand burrs, but we like the idea of a columbarium although the world sounds like a PC incorrect way a native american would say column-bury-'um.

4. Everyone is a comic. When the speaker was talking about urns, one guy said his wife wants to put his ashes in an hour glass so he can continue to be useful. Remember, the cremains are more like gritty sand than fly ash.

5. Did you know you can come back as a diamond? For a fee, you can have part of your loved ones remains compressed into a man-made gem stone. We were told they are beautiful and certified diamonds. I think this is a beautiful idea, especially if you lose a younger person. It would have to remain a family heirloom. You couldn't sell off that diamond.

6. The DNR has a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy about scattering cremains in parks. Wonder if that was adopted during the Clinton administration. She said everytime someone wants to be scattered on public parkland they get that response. It is illegal to scatter ashes there, but they can't forbid it if they don't know.

7. They have a wide selection of urns including one that looks like a life preserver and floats for a brief time before sinking. They have one embedded with flower seeds that you can bury. I read of someone having forget-me-not flowers planted where her ashes were scattered. Nice.

8. They served pizza from a local Broadway Pizza. My brother in-law wanted to know if they served Tombstone Pizza. Groan...good one. The speaker said last year they had done seminars in St. Paul. Someone who received one of the invitation to eat pizza and discuss cremation, wrote to the local paper's Bulletin Board wondering if they used the separate ovens. Everyone is a comic.