Thursday, November 15, 2007

The very final frontier

Someone who knows my family's affinity for all things Star Trek forwarded me a link to the company Eternal Image and one of their products today. The company makes specialty urns and caskets, currently offered styled in Star Trek, Precious Moments, The American Kennel Club, Cat Fanciers' Association and the Vatican versions.

My first reaction was Weird. But then I thought of the "celebration of life" service we held when my father died. People wore shorts. We played Queen, Frank Sinatra, Hakuna Matata. We remembered and cried, sure, but we made light too. We laughed.

OK, I still think they're weird. But I can see people using some of these for those purposes. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have used one or wanted one for himself, but I can see my father grinning at the Star Trek and MLB products.

The cat and dog ones are kind of weird, though. And Precious Moments? Somehow very creepy. Making light or no, it just seems like "precious" shouldn't be ascribed to a vessel holding anyones' remains.

In the end, I guess, as long as the person's wishes are met as closely as possible, I would get a silly urn, or shoot someone's remains into space, or even put a bag over my head and get a Precious Moments casket. It's just a body, after all.

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