A Tomb of One's Own

A course that explains how to celebrate and dispose of a dead loved one at home seems creepy. And then interesting. And then as natural as death itself.

A A A Comments By Lisa Davis Wednesday, Dec 11 2002

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Mesmerized, we watch as the same people move her beautifully painted cardboard box next to the bed, and lift the sheets underneath her to place her into it. A few people tuck flowers and other things inside the box, and then gently close the lid on top, which is genuinely painful to watch. A handful of people load the box into the back of a pickup truck. The next scene shows them walking behind the slow-moving truck into what appears to be a cemetery. After some conversation, they lift the box off the back of the truck and carry it into a crematorium. We watch them slide the box into the cremation chamber, and then see someone shut the door, turning the handle, like a safe, to lock it. My thoughts wander to whether I could ever do such a thing. Liz's partner lets out a loud, distinctive whoop, and it's understood that this call was something they shared, and that she just said goodbye.

It's oddly moving to have taken part in this video farewell to a stranger, and significantly less creepy than the idea of caring for a dead loved one all the way into the cremation oven initially suggests. In fact, there's no real break here between caring for a woman who was ill, dying, and, eventually, dead. It's a continuum that seems, at least at this moment in this living room, quite natural. In fact, as I leave the Temple of Radiance on an Indian summer Sunday afternoon and pass by the sign for the Petrified Forest on my way back to the highway, the whole home funeral business seems, somehow, anything but strange.