Remember Me

NewMexiKen once read that, as with every other phase, we would know when the “boomers” — those 76 million Americans born from 1946 to 1964 — were getting old when we started to see the books about trendy funerals. And so, here is one of those books, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s thoroughly readable Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death.

There have been substantial changes in the funeral business already. One-quarter of all Americans who die are now cremated; in 20 years half are expected to be. The floral industry has been decimated by the term “in lieu of flowers.” According to a 2004 survey cited in the book, 71 percent of Americans do not want a traditional funeral; 14 percent indicated they wanted “a party in my honor.” In a business as tradition-bound and as comfortable in its ways as any — a business where “the words tradition and history are usually engraved right on the company letterhead” — Americans don’t want morticians anymore, they want “funeral planners.”

And what are the funeral planners planning? Cullen set out to learn:

What kind of person turns a loved one into jewelry? What’s it like to watch an artificial reef mixed with the cremated remains of your parent sink to the bottom of the sea? How exactly is a modern mummy made? Where would I find a festival celebrating a frozen corpse? What’s the proper etiquette at a funeral involving animal sacrifice? Who would become a funeral director today—and why?

The most fascinating alternative to tradition we learn about from Cullen has to be turning the cremated remains of one’s loved one into jewelry.

The first step is to collect the cremains. Eight ounces of ashes can yield enough carbon to make up to ten diamonds of up to one carat each in size. Eight ounces is only a smidgen of the four to six pounds of ashes a human body produces—all of which is enough, the company says, for at least one hundred diamonds.

The carbon is turned into graphite; the graphite with pressure, temperature and a few weeks is turned into a diamond — all for just $2,500 to $14,000 depending on the size of the stone. The process is artificial; the diamonds are real.

A correspondent for Time, Cullen is a witty and charming writer whose style keeps a serious topic from becoming maudlin. She has a wonderful knack for turning a clever phrase or coining a revealing term: “end-trepreneuers,” “vigilante marketing” or, my favorite, “inebriating headline writers with a minibar of cliché opportunities.” Cullen’s infant daughter accompanied her on much of the research for the book as her “diaper-wearing assistant.”

When writing about turning a loved one into diamonds, there’s just the right touch:

This, too, is interesting to me. I had not realized that diamonds, all diamonds, could crack; I had thought the diamond was the hardest substance on earth. … As bad as I would feel cracking the stone my husband paid for by teaching fifty hours of clarinet lessons to fourth-graders, I think about how much worse I would feel if this stone were, say, my mom.

Or, about mourners scattering ashes at sea:

Of course, the practice of ash disposition at sea is hardly new. I venture to guess that many a family has gathered on a beach at dusk past the empty lifeguard stands to cast Pop-pop’s cremains into the surf. They are breaking the law. … I imagine this law is not easy to enforce. I personally have never seen federal agents skulking around the Jersey shore at twilight, arresting sad-looking families carrying bags of dust.

Cullen’s many stories about the deceased are poignant, sufficiently emotional to supply the reader with just enough attachment to make a discussion of their funeral affecting.

As Cullen herself reminds us, “death is a big, huge bummer.” It is not a subject we frequently discuss. That said, it is a subject that holds much fascination — it is the one event we all share in life. Remember Me is a masterful book because it introduces us to the topic with just the right balance of sensitivity, information, and humor.

This fascinating, informative, at times moving, at times amusing book deserves your attention. It was published August 1.