The Undertaker Drew a Heavy Sigh

My father, always the iconoclast, despised the funeral industry. He read a big expose on them, probably in "Fact" or one of the other leftist magazines he loved to read, and learned about all of the abuses visited upon pepole at a vulnerable time. "Mrs Goldblatt --thing hard about this. Wouldn't Seymour really appreciate the gold trimmed casket for all of eternity?"

Since he also eschewed the "hocus pocus" of our Jewish faith, he decided to be cremated when he died. My mother wants the same thing. When the time came, we called the Neptune Society, they did the cremation, and sent us a certificate showing the latitude and longitude of the drop off point in the Atlantic Ocean (somewhere off of Pompano Beach). Mom is already prepaid for the same service (it costs about $500).

Well, my in laws feel differently, which is why, as I write this, a "Pre Need Consultant" is sitting in our living room with Wifey, getting ready to accept a $5000 down payment towards a $20,000 total bill for their funerals and gravesites. When I finish this, I plan to go see whether the fellow has a pale complexion and cold handshake. I already know he has a healthy bank account.

My in laws are Holocaust survivors, so the thought of cremation to them is about as repulsive as it gets --that was the fate of their parents, siblings, and friends. For this reason, I can't fault them, in addition to their desire to more closely follow the dictates of the Jewish faith.

My Rabbi friend is on a mission to get me to change my mind, by the way. He's a messianic Jew, and they believe that when Moshiach (the true Messiah) comes back, he will raise the dead, and if you ain't got your parts and pieces available to be reconstituted, you miss the party. When I asked Yossi what happens to the Shoah victims, who were cremated against their desires, he changed the subject. That's the problem with religion --when the light of reason is shined too brightly, the wrinkles are exposed.

Anyway --may my in laws' need for these "pre need" products be far into the future. As for me, as much as I love the ocean, I can wait 4 or 5 decades before I join my father there. I guess we'll see...