Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Forget death, where is thy sting? Now the question is: Death, what do we do with the body?
Quirky, sometimes weird answers can be found in Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen. In stores Tuesday, Remember Me dissects how Americans, particularly baby boomers, are transforming the old 6-feet-under.
The author details a plethora of unusual afterlife options. Among them: mummification, or having our bodies displayed postmortem through "plastination." This process involves "infusing a human corpse with a mix of plastics," Cullen writes. Or turning the cremated remains of a loved one into diamonds: Both are carbon-based.
Cullen, a staff writer for Time magazine, describes how funeral directors are evolving into party planners and how some people want their final resting place to express what they truly loved in life. Witness the "KISS Koffin," a metal casket sold online that comes with photos of the glam group and can be used as a beer fridge before that final air-guitar solo.
Despite its subtitle, which echoes Jessica Mitford's 1963 expose The American Way of Death, Remember Me does not take a serious, investigative look at the business of burial. Nor is Cullen's book -- with its breezy, sometimes glib tone -- an appropriate guide for helping people bury friends and family in a more meaningful or economical way. Six Feet Under fans might be entertained, but others might be offended.
Rather, the youthful Cullen writes how she strapped on her 3-month-old daughter and started traveling from Nashville to South Carolina to L.A. to find out about the new American ways of death. Among her findings:
*There
is growing interest in eco-funerals, in which the unembalmed body is buried in a cloth shroud or cardboard box so it decomposes naturally into the soil. There is no headstone. And no, wild animals do not dig up the bodies.
*The rising rate of cremation is changing what Cullen estimates to be the $20-billion-a-year funeral industry. In 2003, 25% of Americans chose to be cremated. By 2025, 48% of American are expected to choose cremation. Cullen looks at "cremains" disposal.
*Yes, you can order everything online now. Including caskets.
The book concludes on a moving note when Cullen's emotional defenses are unexpectedly breached because of illness and death in her own family. With her new baby, Cullen attends her Japanese grandfather's funeral in Tokyo. And her mother's cancer returns.
"Searching for the fun in funerals," she writes, "I found the if in life."
Remember Me: A Lively Tour
of the New American Way of Death
By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen
Collins, 218 pp., $24.95
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
