Star Dreck

A week ago, if you'd asked me what Mesoloft was, I'd have assumed it was something you should ask your doctor about in case it's right for you. Turns out you should ask your coroner.

Good news for anybody who thinks we haven't dumped quite enough carbon in the air! Now, thanks to Mesoloft, you can drop a nice wad of it all at once, if you have enough scratch. Specifically, you can dump your mom, say, or anybody else who has shuffled off the mortal coil and been baked up tidy. You can have cremains sent way up on a weather balloon and released, and conceivably float burnt bits of your loved one all over the entire planet, as long as the trade winds cooperate--and as a bonus, you can add the trash of the balloon itself after it explodes due to low air pressure and drifts back down to earth, hopefully not into the gut of a turtle. I'd call the whole project a waste of helium, but tastes differ.

Mesoloft says your loved one will drift serenely over the oceans and mountains and eventually come back down to earth in the form of raindrops or snowflakes, even if they're Republicans. Thus the dreadful earthbound experience of scattering ashes into a breeze that suddenly turns on you will be replaced by the tantalizing possibility of exposing everyone on the globe to little bits of dead person.

First Person Buried On The Moon

This is indeed a lower-cost alternative to blasting your loved one into space, but of course you don't quite get all the way to space. You get to the Edge Of Space--there's probably a sign--about fifteen miles up, or down, depending on your perspective. There are other outfits that can get you farther, into Earth orbit, say, or to the moon, or even outside of the solar system. It all depends on how much money you have and how much you loved, or hated, the deceased. Some people are intrigued by the idea of having earthly remains circulating among the stars. Of course, we all will do so eventually, in a few billion years, so this is just a way of getting the jump on things. The space people describe their package as "environmentally benign," which is so, I guess, if you don't take the rocket fuel and such into consideration.

The deep space option will set you back over twelve grand, though, so it's a good thing the homeless have been housed and the hungry fed. Still, it seems a pity that for all that bacon they're only taking a smidgeon of Mom with them, an amount they have branded as a "symbolic portion," and you still have to find a stream to pollute with the rest of her right here on Earth.

This makes the Mesoloft balloon the low-cost version, plus you can get rid of all the cremains if you want. With your basic package you will get a video of the release of the ashes at the edge of space, something, the proprietors insist, you can enjoy over and over again, but I for one did not find the footage as enjoyable as one might. One has visions of a sprinkle of stardust swirling over the big blue marble, but even in the advertising video the reality looks much different. It looks like a sea urchin taking a dump. Boom, blap. Once the video has been recovered, you can have the whole show on a USB drive, which you can totally put a price tag on--it starts at $4,500--and then, if you allow yourself to think about it a little too much, you have now ruined the experience of letting a snowflake land on your tongue for the rest of your life.

In Oregon, It's "Rust To Rust"

Ruth

Slipped away, left this world, lost her battle, entered eternal rest, died, went home, was called home, went  to be with his Lord, succumbed, passed away.  Those, in no order, are the top ten ways we Americans try to not say "died." Except for "died." "Passed away" is the most popular. ("Pissed away" refers to how we spend our lives.) There are regional differences in the words we use. "Died" is popular in North Dakota, for instance, where "bought the farm" isn't all that metaphorical.

Someone calculated the most characteristic death euphemisms for each state based on obituaries.  Here in Oregon I am led to understand we characteristically use "succumbed." I always, always read the obituaries (you know, just in case) and can't remember having seen that word even once. But I like it. "Succumbed" is succinct and apt. If you succumb, you have yielded to an inevitably greater power or force, such as death, which is currently batting a thousand against humanity, all rumors notwithstanding. Relatively few Oregonians are ever called home, or go to be with their Lord. (Oregon ranks first in the nation in churchlessness, beer, and strip joints. I think the strip-joint stat is old news from back before we had internet porn.)

If we get to choose our own verbiage, I'm going with "filled her eternity shorts." But "succumbed" might be the best way to refer to my friend Ruth, who just did it a few days ago. She was not interested in dying. She was a remarkable woman whose sweet face belied her strong convictions. For instance, she despised the medical establishment, and the pharmaceutical industry never sank a single claw in her. Which is unusual for a woman her age.

Generally speaking when a girl gets to be 102, she's kind of ready to go. She might not know how to accomplish it, but she's ready. Not Ruth. She had stacked up a nice neat pile of years and didn't see any reason they couldn't keep on coming. Ruth was about as bright as you can be when you're that old, though we might have lost her two years ago if Trump had been in office. She couldn't have survived getting a congratulatory 100th-birthday card from him, but she liked the Obama one, and promptly signed up for more birthdays. We were getting the idea she'd keep them coming out of sheer habit, but one morning she just succumbed. Or--even better--conceded.

Coincidentally, Dave and I had just taken care of his mom. I found him studying the contents of the dining room hutch, looking for something to evict--he's a neatnik--when his eyes lit on a garish golden box. The Mommie. Dave's mom always signed her cards "The Mommie."

"Let's stick her in the garden," Dave said.

"What? Now?"

Now. He opened the box and retrieved a shockingly large baggie of ashes and bone bits and headed to the back yard. Mom Flambe.

Dave's mom hasn't been around since 1989. In her case, we will say she "clocked out." I don't know what else you can call it when you find her sitting up in her chair with her coffee cup to one side and the newspaper in her lap and the Cubbies on the TV and otherwise lifeless. Her ashes went to live in Dave's sister's closet, where she could visit them when she needed advice, and then two years ago they were "passed on," as it were, to us.

We didn't want them. This kind of thing is not our thing.

What was supposed to happen was she was supposed to be surreptitiously sprinkled on Wrigley Field, but you really have to work at something like that, and we're not ambitious. So the garish golden box ended up in our hutch until now, when Dave took it out the back door.

"How about the compost pile?" I contributed. "That way she'll end up everywhere, if I ever get around to turning it."

We got our neighbor Anna to put on real shoes and come over to witness, because she's a caring soul and already knows we're nuts. I think we laughed a lot but didn't say anything noteworthy as Dave shook out the baggie over our compost pile and began turning it with the pitchfork we're saving for the Revolution. We empty the vacuum cleaner bag for the same reason and with as much ceremony.

We loved The Mommie. But she wasn't in that box.