Saturday, July 10, 2021

Fumous Posthumous

Way More Flowers, Please
It's not that I haven't written about poop. I have. In a pinch I can squeeze out a poop post almost at will. The problem with writing about poop is you're never quite sure when you're finished.

For example, I never learned anything about corpse poop until just recently, and that was only because of this service I subscribe to that sends paying writing jobs. They'll send things like 25 themed calls for magazine submissions. 15 pitch opportunities directly from editors. Two journals willing to part with a nickel for your poem.
 
You can flip through the magazine possibilities pretty fast. Sojourners covers faith, politics, and culture from a biblical perspective. They aren't going to want mine. Anti-Racism Daily is accepting stories of LGBTQ+ experiences as a person of color living in the Midwest. Pass. Post45 Contemporaries' editor is seeking pitches about the state of TTRPG. I don't know what the state of TTRPG is. Maybe it's in the Midwest.

But this one caught my eye. The Order of the Good Death is accepting pitches. This is "a group of funeral industry professionals, academics, and artists exploring ways to prepare a death phobic culture for their inevitable mortality." And I'm all for that. Fear of death may be normal, but it sure takes a chunk out of living. I thought I'd have a look at the site.

I'll say up front I'm not the right writer for "Gentrification and funeral homes" or "How death positive women kickstarted a civil war." So I will probably not pitch them anything. But I did enjoy the Ask A Mortician section, presided over by the perky founder of the Order, Caitlin Doughty. This is where I learned that caskets can indeed explode, which would totally be worth the purchase price. And I also learned what else we might pass when we pass away.

Corpses very commonly poop. It doesn't always happen. Elvis should only have been so lucky.

But it's not really intentional rudeness on the part of the deceased. It's more like what happens with a caulking gun. You've pulled that trigger for the last time and started in on tidying up your job and next thing you know there is caulk all over the place. If you have just perished and you're still full of...personal caulk, your retired sphincters have a statement to make.

I like it though. People think it's undignified but there's something to be said for accepting what you cannot control--death, for instance--and corpse poop pretty much epitomizes things you cannot control. Morticians, however, can. They use butt plugs. Actually they're called A/V plugs because they can be used in your A and your V, if applicable in your particular situation. It's just a way of allowing people to keep some things to themselves.

People don't like to think about corpse poop because they don't want to be a bother upon death, but face it--you're a corpse, you're already a bother, and by comparison a little leakage is small potatoes. Or something similar.

But I'm all for it. I hope it happens to me. Life needs punctuation and at a time it would otherwise peter out, like ellipses...I hate ellipses...a good post-departum poop is an exclamation point! If it is reported that I launched a dookie after I died, which I anticipate to be the extent of my afterlife, please crack a smile, and raise a glass. And thank a mortician.

.................

Public Service Announcement: Murrmurrs has switched over to a new subscription service called follow.it that promises not to vanish in mid-air anytime soon. So those of you subscribing will notice you're getting a new email notice and it does actually look pretty spiffy. If you click on "share" it will show you other ways to get your Murrmurrs dose. (I think.) There are new bells and whistles. You're welcome to tell me about them because I can be sort of oblivious. Thank you for your attention. If you haven't subscribed (for free, obviously, who makes money writing?) you can do so over there in the left-hand margin under Pootie's handsome mug.

41 comments:

  1. Corpses very often fart as well, which can be quite startling to the family of the deceased. I wondered if corpse poop could be any worse than the stuff from the living, and was reminded of the time when I heard of the death of Jimi Hendrix and a friend said he could not think of anything worse than choking to death on your own vomit. I said I could - choking to death on someone else's.

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  2. Too chock full of smarty lines to pick out just one ! You is funneee.

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  3. "Butt Plugs"? Well, they seem to make more sense for the dead than they do for the living....And I'll just stop there....

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  4. Yet another thing I had not considered which makes perfect sense.

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  5. Oddly enough I have considered this - if my husband dies in his sleep in our bed - wow, what a mess! and then I most certainly would need to buy a new mattress and who's gonna take a poopy and urine soaked mattress away? I'm gonna have to clean up that mess myself - Oh, yeah - I know the body releases all this stuff on death and yeah, I have given it some thought.

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    Replies
    1. Time to invest in a crappy mattress and a rubber sheet. Or, you know, soon.

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  6. I'm having a 'when worlds collide' moment,as I've followed that mortician (off & on) on her popular Youtube channel going on 5 years now. Somehow, in all this time, I managed to avoid hearing about corpse poop. Until today. Oh the humanity! Dammit, you and your clever Latin titles!

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  7. Okay, I don't know what shocks me more: ApacheDug following a mortician on YouTube, post-mortem poop, or your hatred of ellipses... which I LOVE! They help to add a pause to something that may be needed when someone is trying to be funny on-line.

    Instead, I'll be serious. I'm not afraid of Death. As someone who suffers from insomnia most nights of the week (sometimes with its best friend "anxiety attack") I look upon it as an end to my insomnia. [As a side note: I only started having insomnia when I went through menopause. I have heard from my know-it-all friend, Google, that this is a frequent result of menopause. I look upon it as Mother Nature's way of saying "Why aren't you dead yet? Oh... and, by the way, why didn't you procreate like everyone else?"]

    I DO however fear DYING. HOW? WHEN? Will I poop myself? (Yeah, thanks for giving me one more thing to obsess about, Murr!) Even more than dying, however, I fear living to "a ripe old age." We as a people are not kind to the extreme old. We "warehouse" them. It's a big fucking business now. I do NOT want to be warehoused. Hence, my love of classic cars and an air-tight garage. My husband sometimes talks about selling them, but is easily distracted (fortunately).

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    1. I've quoted him before on this: Woody Allen, on death. "I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens."

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  8. Exploding caskets? Doesn't the deceased have the air and other fluids removed before being placed in his final bed? So he doesn't puff up and explode, taking his casket with him. Or her.

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    Replies
    1. Not always. And it only happens when people pay the big bucks for the super-sealed casket. Which they do, funny enough, in a bid for some sort of sordid immortality. BOOM!

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    2. Decomposition produces gas, even if the various fluids and solids are drained out.

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    3. I should have remembered the decomposition, I watched every single episode of CSI.

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  9. Not sure what it says about me, but I think this is one of your very best recent posts. There are some exceptionally fine lines in here, above and beyond the usual very high quality. If you haven’t read him yet I can’t recommend Thomas Lynch enough. I think you will love his writing. He is (was) the town mortician in Milford Michigan, a poet, author, single father, Irish and recovering alcoholic. Start with Bodies In Motion and At Rest. He has several others. You will laugh and cry and laugh some more. What a piece of work is man…(pardon the elipse)

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    Replies
    1. Will do. Ellipses have their place. Sometimes people use them to separate their thoughts on the page, and those put me to sleep. I'm delicately wired.

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    2. PS A lot of my recent posts have been bleak. And I'm afraid I'm not QUITE done with that yet.

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  10. It isn’t every day you get your Dark Humor and your Scatological Humor in one swell foop.

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  11. And to think, I'm here because I had a strange notice in my email which I wasn't sure was from Murr... (sorry) Come for the clarification, stay for the exploding corpses. This is why Buddhists cut up their loved one's corpses into manageable pieces and put them on the next nearest mountaintop for the vultures. "Bye Ma, see you in our next lifetimes! Or the ones after that, or that, or that... ad infinitum."

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    Replies
    1. I wish that were an option for body disposal here. I love birds of all sorts, and I'd rather my body be useful in death, as I haven't been particularly useful in life....

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    2. You know, in India, the "sky burial" industry took a big hit when the vultures started dropping dead because of some drug they'd started administering to their cows. They tried to make do with crows but the vultures were WAY more efficient. I don't know what the current situation is.

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  12. P.S. The flowers on that casket appear to be trying to crawl away. I'd have gone for something more perky. Just sayin'.

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    Replies
    1. If I end up in a casket, which I hope I won't, I want someone to put in a random fart generator. As my genius friend David S. says, "let one RIP."

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  13. It was worth it just for "post-departum."

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  14. A few months ago I stumbled upon (that's a good metaphor for most of my life there) one of the Ask A Mortician videos. I loved it, but do not remember it. (Should that last sentence go on my headstone?)

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  15. Well, I saw a *scary* looking msg from follow.it
    when I looked at my phone way too early this a.m. In my sleep deprived brain I thought it was cautioning me about the subject matter - poop. Did I want to continue? The b & w text seemed to be impressing on me that continuing would not be a good idea.

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    Replies
    1. I had no idea my new subscription service would send out such a spammy-looking notice. I hurriedly added the boldface PSA above, but I think I'll have to do that again to warn people.

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  16. I told my daughter on my demise I want to be rolled up in a nice piece of cotton fabric and planted. My plan is to reincarnate as a tree.My gravesite faces Mt. Hood directly, so when my dear ones visit, they can have a lovely view of our mountain.

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    Replies
    1. That's some fine real estate. Willamette National?

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  17. I don't have to worry about my death. I know it won't happen in my lifetime. :)

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    Replies
    1. I'm starting to worry about what WILL happen in my lifetime, though.

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  18. Anyone who has had pets die at home can attest to this rather startling inconvenience...

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