In the Afterlife, the life you live in after the life of someone you love dies - in my case, my husband of 30 years died in a car accident - you’re manic. Most days are absurd, and what comes into your mind is reliably inappropriate to the spaces you find yourself in.
One of the first lessons you learn in the Afterlife is that you’re invisible, living in the seams of life between the past and the now; you’re a ghost of your former self. You literally will look in the mirror and think, “Who the hell is that dead-looking person?” You’re not really a live person; you’re in the Afterlife, and so no one sees you; maybe they’re not alive either, who knows? Those of us who live in the Afterlife act sort of like a zombie, so keep track of your brain. True: A lot of people can’t touch death, so they’re avoidant, distant, cool even. They avoid you by lowering their gaze, acting as if they’ve just seen the most interesting dust speck while walking down the hall of the faculty wing. They are cool and distant, using nonverbal proximity - the nearness in space, time, or relationship to convey their discomfort. You are seen, by some, to be infectious if you are living, albeit in the afterlife, a scarred reminder that death came to you and, by proximity, if they let it, to them. You have been touched by the Angel of Fuckery, and that bitch is unsparing. People realize this and mask up around you to avoid possible contamination.
People who have not transitioned to living in the Afterlife don’t understand what it takes out of us over here to absorb all the time/expense of the partner no longer here doing his or her share of life, from childcare to dishes, or the emotional expense of having to restore our own spirits, alone and without our best friend. They don’t know about all the quiet crying, the reapplication of mascara to be prepared to look ‘fine’ on a Zoom call in front of two-hundred parents and students and coworkers and deans. On a 24-hour clock, I end each day in a time deficit: so much that remains undone, unresolved, incomplete.
While sitting with a friend on my porch, I shared what I’d learned about cremains. She did not want to hear about cremains, and she changed the subject abruptly. Did she realize she changed the subject to talk of dogs and the concert she went to the day before? That was a social error, a pragmatic error, one of proximity – she could not be in close proximity with my experience. I wanted to reflect on how life was like sorting the steel from the skeletal remains (stainless steel hip joints, pacemakers, and the like) before pulverizing the bones into cremains. I wanted to talk about how the cremains of my husband and those of his mother were different in color and talc-quality and if that was due to age or skill of the funeral home that performed the service. She did not want to sit that close to the truth of cremains. People morph into their true selves right in front of you, like Aliens did in Men in Black or creatures that were using magic to conceal their true nature in mythology. Residents of the Afterlife are issued a nonsense detector or a sorcerer's un-concealment lens or a type of sorting lens - detecting bullshittery is one of the rare gifts over here but it is really helpful. And if you’re the one with your heart breaking and your mascara running, you’ll have to deal with ‘The Box’ at some point while living in the shitstorm of the Afterlife. Sucks to be you, girlfriend; it just plain sucks to be you.
The thing is, you get transmuted when you arrive in the Afterlife – everything changes. Even your signature will not look like yours; hands of ghosts don’t work so well, so it won’t match the identification they demand when you go to pick up the cremains, but if you manage a perfunctory scribble, the morose undertaker will hand you ‘The Box’.
You are handed ‘The Box’ – you get to leave with it. It’s heavier than you might imagine; I estimated it to be around 7 pounds – the average weight of babies - for my 185-pound husband with strong bones who played as number 7 on the Sidwell Friends football team as the quarterback (go Quakes!). That’s Earth weight, of course – it would be heavier or lighter if I were standing on the moon or on Jupiter or Mars.
They hand you a bag to put the box in, to make transport easier. You don’t have to buy that bag specifically, but you can be assured the cost of it was included by someone, likely an accountant with experience in cost accounting, who itemized the cost of the inventory of the funeral home and helped them identify and inventory, in their QuickBooks, the cost-benefit of such an item. And so you did “pay for it” because it was included in the fee for service–but it is given as a gift to make your life convenient. They also haven’t mentioned that inside the box is another bag, a plastic one secured with a zip-tie.
As you shake ‘The Box’ to fit a literal square peg into a round hole style, you notice something completely absurd: their logo is emblazoned on said bag. I know, but really this is what happens. The funeral home has their name and logo printed on the swag bag (swag being an acronym for ‘stuff we all get’) that holds the box of what people call ashes but, as I’ve said, are not ashy after all; they’re gritty, like the salt rims around your eyes after crying. And while I’m at it, let’s talk about what came in that worst swag bag ever – Cremains, not ashes but cremains.
Apparently, these memorial swag bags are a growing trend and sometimes contain party favors like tissues or candy or seeds, and they call it a memorial bag – it’s actually a term, go figure, as if you’re ever going to forget the occasion for this ghoulish bag. Mine was empty, full of nothing, flattened, and the undertaker first placed the box of cremains on top of the flattened bag as if to suggest the two items were a set. Completely insane. I so hate telling you this, forgive me. Pour some wine and let the truth settle. A lot of absurd truth has to find a way to settle in the Afterlife.
Before the Afterlife, conference swag bags contained useful things like ink pens and notebooks, water bottles, lip balm, a mini first aid kit, a packet of Motrin, and some chocolate. A memorial swag bag has none of that: The bag is full of emptiness. Yep, the Afterlife just keeps throwing more unwantedness into your life, and here, you get the worst swag bag ever. You are probably laughing now and imagining that I made all this up, like it’s a lie, but no, it’s the truth: you get a bag no one in the world, much less the Afterlife, would or could possibly have any use for. No one ever sat around and said, “You know what I want? I want a reusable bag with the funeral home’s logo on it to use, I don’t know, at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday.” No one wants this, but someone told them - the undertaker and his family - that people in the afterlife would want this – imagine taking it to Kroger as a reusable bag, saving that five cents, one nickel, half a dime, a fifth of a quarter, one 20th of a dollar, because you brought your own bag. It’s preposterous.
It’s so preposterous, though I might just want to do that, bring my cremains souvenir bag somewhere. Maybe at Halloween, maybe I’ll wear my witch hat (it should be clear by now that I have one; no, that’s a lie – I am trying not to lie – I have three witches’ hats with matching dresses – a black one, a purple one and a kicking fire red one). I also have a black wool crone-hat. To be transparent, I have shoes that curl up at the toe and striped socks and stockings with spiders. I could really make a scene by bringing along my black bag with Hastings Funeral Home, dressed in full pagan.
I read the book The Once and Future Witches this year while living in the afterlife, and it was so good I believed I could be a witch, maybe that I was a witch and could cast a few spells. It did leave me feeling witchy, like acting in public in ways that make a scene from time to time. Truth: You can be anything when you read a good story and also when you live in the Afterlife. Living in the Afterlife is like that; you slip into ridiculousness, into a mania you begin to enjoy. Hastings Funeral Home in large white letters on a black cloth bag I can fill with candy fingers at Walmart; no, that seems too far. But the mind is desperate for some way, any way to stay connected to mundane life, desperate for sense-making, something normal like buying candy in the candy aisle of Walmart. It’s a lie; nothing is normal, but the mind persists and finds the bizarre, the macabre, that lane of dark humor I never thought funny until now.
Now my local liquor store, Table and Vine, has frequent sales on a nice Red Blend wine from Portugal, named Paxis, my first choice for a reasonably priced bottle of wine. I buy four at a time and Table and Vine gives me a handy swag bag with their logo on it and with pockets around the inside edges, each holding a bottle of wine in a nice sleeve so they don’t bump each other on the ride home. In the inner space, I can fit a pack of White Claws for my friend who likes to visit and finds red wine gives her a headache. The bag is sturdy and holds it all: four bottles and the box of four cans of White Claw. The straps are long and sturdy and fit around my shoulder, making it easy to carry the load. Now a bag like THAT with the funeral home’s logo, that would be a handy souvenir gift. They could pack some wine, a bit of cheese and a tube of biscuits and still have that perfect space for a small box in which they’ve packed Bill’s cremains for me to take home.
If I had a bag like that, then after I remove The Box of The Bag of Bill (well, his crushed bones), I’d have a bag emblazoned with the logo that could transport potions, and the bag would signify to all who understand the Afterlife that this wine I’m now packing into that bag each visit to Table and Vine is, in every way, necessary and not a mere hedonistic indulgence. Maybe they can add the date you entered the afterlife and for two years after that date you get a sucks-to-be-you afterlife club discount. A bunch of us can all be in solidarity as we stand in the checkout line.
You’re probably wondering now, as I began to wonder, what WOULD be helpful in a memorial swag bag? Surely we should do some thinking about this. What about a bag with some sunscreen, some of those eye wipes that rub off the crusty salt after a night of tears during sleep, you know, the plugs that result in chronic styes or plugged oil glands that make huge festering red orbs on the lids. I could use some dry shampoo and Lume deodorant because let’s face it, we don’t change clothes much in the Afterlife and showers require nakedness and we’re already so exposed. I could use some more of those Roc Under the eye microneedling puff busters, a good pen and a small pad that fits in my purse. The deluxe swag could come with some wine – why the fuck isn’t there more wine in the afterlife? Or at least a nip of good Buffalo Creek Bourbon I could slip into bitter coffee. Maybe a water bottle – it’s important to hydrate over here where the ghosts roam and dry us out. Tissues, we all need tissues and sunscreen and some lip balm – did I mention how dehydrated we are during grief? Crying out all our fluids? Some undereye concealer? One of those boss wands that warm the sebaceous glands in the eye pores and release those pesky sores. Aspirin, Motrin – what the hell people? Isn’t this an obvious choice?
How about a sleep mask, some ear buds, these aren’t out of the range of a good swag. Sunglasses? A HAT? An umbrella? A portable power bank for my iPhone/ a pocket mirror? A bottle opener or wine opener? A guide to the Afterlife (checklist: Floss, shower, flush, breathe, eat, hydrate), a map and directions for how to pick up a death certificate. I’d toss in a mood ring or stress dotes (really temperature detectors) to monitor your state. A Fitbit would be premier to monitor if you’re sleeping, moving, if your heart is beating, to monitor if you’re alive. And one of those heated eye therapy wands to reduce undereye puffiness and unclog those pores around your lashes, the ones that cause styes in the Afterlife. I’m also partial to the flying, screaming, flingshot slingshot cow or pig that launches over 50 feet and makes screaming sounds while soaring through the air and a satisfying thwap when it hits the wall. I fantasize a lot about smashing things against the wall – a squealing toy would be a good way to sublimate that destructive impulse into a somewhat socially acceptable action. What trouble would it be to include a fidget toy would be nice, a squishy little lizard, a slinky, a lanyard, the weekend’s agenda if nothing else. If you search for ‘fidget toys for funerals’ you get some great ideas – textured worry pocket crosses, textured worry stones for calming, skin picking fidget picky toys (honest, it’s a thing).
Most of us over here in the Afterlife are women (75% of uncoupled spouses due to death [widowed individuals] are women. That’s about 11.5 million to 11.8 million widows compared to only about 3.7 million widowers, a gender ratio of roughly 3 to 1). So a swag bag would be wise to add in some ballet slippers like we often take to weddings and don after we slipped off our beautiful 1 hour heels so we could dance in silky flats. We have to stand a lot in the Afterlife, give us a break, our toes will thank you. Oh, and we could use some cashews, those buttery nuts that have more energy/calories. I mean really, it all seems so obvious to me.
If you’re still with me and not off talking about dogs and concerts, we should really talk a minute about cremains. Cremains are the cremated remains of skeletal tissue (bone). I’m not sure why they lie and tell you they’re ashes, they’re not ashy at all. It’s all a tangle of lies. You need to get used to all the lies in the afterlife.
Some people will try to tell you the ashes are what is left of a life, but that’s a lie – it is not what is left of a life; it’s what is left of their bones. Bill returned first to the clouds, then the stars, but nothing of Bill was left in those cremains except the bones that he used for a few decades. There is no way to be sane and live through this; the afterlife is a world of insanity, and you are here, all you believed as true pulverized into dust.
I had to say goodbye to his body… It’s unthinkable and very silly, really. You’ll want to scream something like “That’s not my Bill” or the name of your person (you can scream it’s not my Bill; that really would be silly), and you’ll want to scream because it really isn’t your person anymore, just a body. I promised to be truthful, so I admit, I did kiss that body that looked like Bill goodbye, but really, I knew Bill was long gone, and his body made no reaction, and Bill always reacted to my kisses, so I was extra assured this doppelganger was not my Bill and I could let it go. It’s absurd, it’s all really truly absurd in the afterlife yet it is the closest thing you have to the body that once loved you and moaned under the pressure of your kiss and melted when you touched him and turned to a soft invitational blanket of softness when you rubbed your nose on his subclavian fossa… shit, that last goodbye is like giving up gluten and saying farewell forever to croissants or buttermilk biscuits with homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam.
None of that is in the box that contained a plastic bag; it was all put into a bag emblazoned with a business name on the side the day I had to show my ID to pick up the cremains.
Make up your own truths – whatever you want, whatever brings you comfort. Why believe the lie that those bits of leftovers have anything to do with the person who made you feel how you feel? That’s what I did; I refused to believe that those bits of leftovers had anything to do with the man who made me feel taller than the sky. Believe nothing but the lies that make you feel taller than the sky and all the cherished remnants of what you get to keep in the afterlife. It’s not much, and it comes with a lot of salt, but it’s all you get, and you might as well find a way to enjoy it.
