where are you going laddie?

Here's a statistic to start your day: every 15 minutes a member of the “baby boomer” generation prepares to move into the last chunk of real estate they'll ever need. Of course the current options don't restrict a member of this trend-setting generation to the simple pine box and turf condo or brass urn with lid. Nowadays we can be sent into space, packed into fireworks, turned into diamonds or put in jeweled pendents for the bereaved to wear for a few days before moving the momento mori reverently to the back of the sock drawer. There seems no end, so to speak, for the ways one's ashes can be stored, scattered or fashioned. Your cremains, i.e. ashes and bone fragments, can mix with the concrete forming an artificial reef off the coast of a favorite winter holiday spot or be comingled with procelain fashioned into a small statue of your favorite golf bag and clubs It will look simply darling on the side table next to that cloisonne lamp where cousin Max awaits the final trumpet call.

Even the traditionalists who choose to go to their final resting place on the shoulders of six to eight friends and family can settle down in a mausoleum complete with flat screen tv. Death is no longer an excuse to ignore one's responsibilities to visitors. The more socially adept can provide a range of entertainment options from a solar powered screen set into a headstone that shows 10 minute loop of photos and video clip highlights of the life now complete to a luxuriously appointed tomb with plasma screens showing a custom produced movie starring the tenant of the crypt. Of course this second option requires a little bit of planning so it can be filmed in happier and less recumbant times.

It seems my generational siblings are taking the concept of disposable income to a whole new level, both in the literal and figurative sense. The positive side of all this is that death is finally being recognized as the flip side of life, the completion of the circle and the first step towards the next stage of our existence, be it celestial, infernal or compostable. There is a certain denial involved in all this: "I won't really be gone if I'm sitting on the front lawn as Grumpy, Sneezy and Doc in a tasteful ceramic tribute to Snow White."

Modern memoral services still tend to gloss over the fact that the guest of honour is in fact deceased. Not that it isn't a good thing to celebrate the life of the significantly absent – funerals give those of us left behind a chance to remember and share the living memories with others. Just so long as we keep the tears and sorrow to a decent level. None of the wailing, tearing of garments and other displays of loss found in less civilized cultures.

I don't know. I think sometimes those other cultures are on to something. They wail, drink, sing, dance and wail some more. The dearly departed is part of the party; talked to, joked with and occasionally fallen upon by a distraught family member. This is all part of getting it out and not viewed with any censure by those who merely want to commune with the spirit of the deceased and spirits of a more distilled nature. Of course this takes place in cultures where there is a firm belief the body is now an empty shell, that the soul, the identity of that person, is still present, there but invisible, celebrating right along with everyone still clad in their mortal clay.

Once the deceased has been given a decent farewell, be it by wake or vigil, they are taken to their resting place with ceremony and rituals designed to send that incorporeal personality on to it's final reward. Some rituals are performed expressly with the purpose of ensuring that departue does takes place, lest Auntie Celia hang around the house moving pots and pans, rattling chains and curdling the milk.

After Halloween, when most North Americans are struggling with a Mar's bar hangover, in Mexico there is a two day party with their dead family members as guests of honour. It isn't spooky, it isn't morbid. Great Grand-dad is greeted with warm words and given a run down on what's been happening in the family over the past year. Auntie Celia is invited to the picnic, a plate of her favorite foods laid out on her neatly groomed grave, and she meets the newest members of the family.

The difference is probably in our cultural visions of where we are actually going once the curtain is rung down on our brief moment on the stage. Do we exit stage left to be greeted by angels or by a dresser who pushes us back out in a new skin – rich or poor, human, animal, vegetable or insect depending on the karma critic's review of our previous performance? Or do we simply leap off stage into a black abyss? It's a question we all face and some of us resolve with faith, others by planning a disco party on a hilltop. Then there are those like Woody Allen who said, "I don't believe in the afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear."

As for me I don't anticipate exiting stage left for several years yet but when I do take that final bow, feel free to stop by after Halloween for a visit – you bring the popcorn and I'll have the movie.