Jeremy Bentham Goes to Head of the Class
Talk about your fun time! Uncle Ed and I attended a book discussion group in Story Chapel at the famous Mount Auburn Cemetery founded back in a day when most people just buried each other out back. OK well that's not really true: there were church-yards and there were potters fields but the Mount Auburn Cemetery of Cambridge Massachusetts was the first place to offer public burial in a tranquil park-like atmosphere where a person could think on the loved one laid to rest there and on the great cycle of nature too.
As it happens the great cycle of nature was actually the topic at hand; the group was discussing Mark Harris's Grave Matters, a book about ‘green burial’ which means basically “Hold the formaldehyde honey 'cause ah’m a-goin’ back to nature and the quicker the better!” - and the discussers there gathered were so cool and fascinating I fell in love at once though the feeling may not have been mutual because not only did we get there late, Uncle Ed thumping down the quiet chapel aisle to the beat of his cane and me offering six kinds of body language that said So sorry! Oh dear! etc but we hadn’t even read the book.
Plus with all of us gathered round this very large table and our voices curling upward in that tall space like smoke from so many votive candles, Uncle Ed somehow turned deaf as a haddock. “I CAN”T HEAR A THING!” he faced me and boomed, the only male in the reverent feminine stillness. “Jeez, keep it down!” I wanted to say but how could I when I love him so much and he's 88 in November (even though things can get a little dicey sometimes as when an extremely heavy 20-year-old male waddled into the doctor’s office where the two of us were cooling our heels. “It sure is a b-i-i-i-i-g country!” Ed said that time and in that same clarion voice.
The group talked about all the options for dealing with one's remains When The Time Comes and I can say more about that another time. For now though let's give a big shout-out to philosopher Jeremy Bentham who Ed and I now know had his body forever preserved upon his death in 1832. It rests in a glass chamber at University College in London with a nice wax head replacing his actual head (Don’t ask! Another botched job by the nip-and-tuck men!) Here it is now anyway and heck maybe I’ll go this route myself. The gloves give a playful Mickey Mouse feel to the whole thing and c’mon, who doesn’t look good in a hat?
