This 24-Year-Old Latina Mortician Beautifies the Dead and Influences the Living

[Chainfire]

1. I find that story mildly interesting, but I can't help but thinking that it may be the ultimate case

of putting lipstick on a pig. I do not wish to demean the woman's art and I am sure that some people would treasure her skills.

I have to admit that I am biased as I just have never appreciated modern funerary practice, and when it is my time, it will be literally ashes to ashes. No plot, no stone, no ceremony, no magic incantations, no begging for the forgiving for my sins. Bring me home in a cardboard box and fertilize my favorite Live Oak with what remains. It that is too much trouble, flush me down the toilet. The funeral business hates me as bad as barbers have hated me all my life.

That is not the worst of it. When I become king of the world, I intend to wipe all cemeteries off the face of the earth and replace them with low-cost housing. If any of the internees don't like it, they can sue or haunt.

I remember my first viewing of a body in a casket when I was 8-10 years old. The man had been one of my father's coworkers, and I knew him in passing. My lasting impression was that he looked like wax. (it may have been wax as I don't know what part of him was crushed under the car) I didn't like it then and I don't like it now, and no, they don't look like they are sleeping, they don't look peaceful, they look like they are dead, and it is not the last memory that I want of a loved one... At my mother's funeral, my siblings damn near insisted that I go gaze at my mother's dead body and I refused; I didn't need that kind of closure.