Meadowbrook Valley Park is a misnomer. 
It is not in a valley. It is on a hillside. But as cemeteries go the Park has one overriding advantage: it is close to my home. Within walking distance actually, yet all the fellows that have come to rest there were brought in by car and a few were carried up on the shoulders of six to eight sturdy sons and grandsons. So far none, I have been assured, availed themselves of the pedestrian access.
It is a nice, well-kept place. “Henry will have a beautiful view of the ocean,” I once overheard the widow exclaim during her husband’s funeral. To which the officiating Bishop replied: “Good luck!” But it is a nice place, don’t get me wrong. They recently had an advertisement in the local newspaper announcing their 2018 summer specials at zero interest for twelve months. If you could be sure of renaissance this might be a good deal, on a trial basis. Me, I would rather pass on this offer and stay where I am..
I was intrigued by their Personal Planning Guide. Not that I was planning to depart as yet. Only a desperate pseudo-existentialist would do such a thing. But it drove home to me that your death does indeed require some planning if you want to save your survivors a lot of trouble.
With the offer of the guide, and as a neat come-on symbolizing, I assume, your last supper, the Park also threw in a voucher for a local restaurant, valid while supplies last. I am the last person to refuse a free meal but in this case I fervently hope that they will run out. It would be a little too morbid for me.
I must admit, though, that all these musings made me pay attention to other reminders of the unavoidable. I saw a huge sign in a strip mall announcing a sale on coffins, for example. On first reading I thought it was coffee, but no, I had read it correctly. It is just that I had never heard of such an offer. Until I found out that you can buy your coffin even at Costco, except that they call them caskets. And being Costco they probably package them in twos. I could not help noticing that they have two kinds. One is called the Gardener casket at $900 each, the other is the President casket, priced a little lower than the gardener at $800, thus politicizing even my funeral. Shame on them. I also found out that it is legal to sell coffins, or caskets, made out of cardboard. The FTC is not worried about that except, neutral as any government organization should be, they have standardized the terminology and call all such vessels Containers. And if your brain is wired the same as mine you must now have visions of huge container ships. Are we ready to be shipped out in a container?
© 2018 by Herbert H. Hoffman