Dying to Be Ripped Off

Life is expensive. But it doesn’t end there. Death is expensive too. Go price cemetery plots, headstones, caskets and embalming, and you won’t believe what they charge you to dispose of a carcass.

Why is it so expensive? Because people in the “death industry” prey upon us when we are at our weakest. Funeral directors love it when you walk in all upset about the death of a family member, because you are too distraught to think clearly and you can be guilted into paying more than you should for anyone’s final expenses. For example, there’s the casket. Any material that can hold a human body for a few days will suffice. You could use a very large Tupperware container or cardboard box. Hell, you could wrap the body in a tarp for that matter. But there would be little profit in that. Agents of death want you to buy elaborate oak, mahogany or copper caskets that cost thousands of dollars apiece. There are cheaper models made out of pine, but they discourage such “welfare coffins” by making you think that anyone who wouldn’t spend a sizable portion of their retirement money on a casket must not have loved the deceased very much.

Many people have bought into the idea that a lot of money must be spent on a pretty casket, and they actually feel offended if you skimp on it, as though it’s somehow an insult to the deceased. (“How dare you bury Fred in a pine box! What kind of cheap, insensitive bastard are you?”)

Another rationale that funeral directors give for a more expensive casket is that the higher-priced materials preserve the body longer, as though that will do anyone any good. What, it’ll take longer for the body to decompose? Fine, then it’ll suffer longer.

Then they try to add extras in order to suck more lifeblood out of you. Did you know that you can buy a casket that has a warranty? Yes, a friggin’ warranty! They’ll guarantee that the casket will remain intact for 50, 75, even 100 years. Okay, assuming for a moment that prolonging the decomposition of the box is the least bit desirable, how would you know whether it remained intact for the life of the warranty? Who is going to dig it up every year to check?

There are soft, pillowy pads that you can buy to rest your deceased relative on for his “eternal comfort” in the coffin. Am I the only one who realizes that the person is dead, that he is not conscious, and that you could throw him on a compost heap and it wouldn’t matter?

The funeral racket thrives because people don’t want to face death. They hold onto the ludicrous idea that the lifeless carcass that used to be their kin must be treated as though it were still alive. Which brings us to another form of expense: embalming. The cadaver’s blood is drained and replaced with a fluid that slows decomposition. The corpse is then dressed in “burial clothes”, its hair is combed and make-up is applied so that people can view it at the funeral home and say, “Doesn’t Fred look nice?” What a crock.

When I die, I don’t want anyone going through the trouble of providing a typical funeral with an ornate casket and a service where everyone feels obligated to remain quiet. I want people to party and dance around my mortal coil and say things like “Ben was a great guy” and “He sure owed me a lot of money.”

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The preceding was an excerpt from my book, Money Can Make You Rich. Look for it on http://www.bn.com and http://www.amazon.com. Or e-mail me at fitandfun@yahoo.com to order a signed, discount copy.