Paul Gauguin, who tried to commit suicide by swallowing arsenic deep in the mountains of Tahiti. He had just finished one of his greatest paintings, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Gauguin hoped that no humans would find his body so that ants would eat his corpse. In his zeal, he swallowed too much arsenic. His body rejected

One gentleman cremated by Bayside was just twenty-one—close to my age at the time. Twenty-one years is time enough to be a fuck-up, sure, but not time enough to be a lost cause.

The person who performs the Ghusl is chosen by the dying man or woman themselves. Men are washed by men and women are washed by women. Selection is an honor and a sacred obligation to fulfill.

desquamation,

But that face, that human, was gone. Mother Nature, as Tennyson said, is “red in tooth and claw,” demolishing every beautiful thing she has ever created.

Service Corporation International, the largest American funeral home and cemetery corporation, based in Houston, Texas, has even managed to trademark dignity. Go to any of their “Dignity Memorial®” facilities, and that pesky ® shows up every time, subtly letting you know they’ve cornered the market on postmortem poise.

I wouldn’t be like Yvette Vickers, the B-movie actress and star of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, who was found completely mummified in her Los Angeles home more than a year after her death. She had been a recluse while alive; no one had bothered to check on her. Instead of worrying that my own cat would end up eating my dead body to survive, I

Eventually the morgue exhibitions became too popular with the citizens of Paris, and they were shut down to the public.

In 1899, a mere 4 percent of the US population was over sixty-five—forget making it to eighty-five.