Being Don/Being Curtis

My pals on my online community have been talking this week about what should be done with our corporeal remains. We veer into this territory with some regularity -- it's one of our persistent topics of conversation, like cooch shaving and whether women should change their names after they get married.

This time Cheryl added a new twist in the form of Don, "a friend whose ashes ended up in my possession. I don't really understand why, as he had a wife and a daughter. He's in my liquor cabinet, which is appropriate and keeps me from having to sweep him up when the cats knock him over."

Cheryl was writing out her instructions for what should happen should she be flattened by a bus or what have you, and realized she should also make some provision for Don. Various suggestions were made -- planting a flowering shrub and scattering him around it, sending Don as a wedding gift to his daughter, making a diamond out of him or sending him to be incorporated in a man-made reef in the Carribean. Kassa suggested ebay. Someone else offered to come and pick Don up as an excuse for a trip to Chicago.

Renee then declared that she'd just realized that when she dies, she wants to be cremated and "have my ashes passed around among random people with a minimal amount of concern for me, but with enough decency to keep passing me around. I wanna be Don!" She thought it would be cool to "live in someone's liquor cabinet for a while, then on someone's mantle, then stuck in the basement for 20-30 years, then maybe an end table somewhere."

Another woman imagined about being put in the trophy case of some San Antonio sports team, or spread on the field. I had the brainwave that I could be in a sealed urn used as a kind of "talking stick" for group facilitation.

These flippant musings about nomadic post-life existence led to some serious focus on living wills, organ donation, etc. As a group, we were clear that our organs are up for grabs, open for the continuation of new stories in other people who badly need them.

This conversation intersects with the 8th birthday this Sunday of my cousin's son Curtis. Curtis had a liver transplant when he was 9 months old. My cousin, one of the most amazing men I know, donated part of his own liver. My own teeny tiny part in that whole epic experience -- one afternoon post-surgery that I spent holding the so-ill bundle of sticks that was this baby in a darkened room while his dad recovered and his mom slept -- was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. And here we are, Curtis this incredible 8 year old of curiosity and will and generosity and cuddling on the couch and enthusiastic devouring of online satellite weather and darkness maps, imaginings of climbing the highest mountains.

Happy Birthday, Curtis. Sign your donor cards, everyone.