If there is an afterlife, imagine being greeted by Jim Morrison.
You’re disoriented. He’s belting out lyrics as an ironic welcome: “Break on through to the other side!” You ask, “Where am I?” Oscar Wilde taps you on the shoulder, tucks the green carnation from his lapel behind your ear and starts reading aloud from “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
Is there anything more morbid than estate planning?
I still can’t decide. Cremation? That seems like the most eco-friendly option. I’d want my ashes to be scattered in Niagara Falls. That is the first trip I took with my wife when we were teenagers. I have a vivid memory of her dazzling smile as the sun was setting and the water was roaring.
Her kind warmth and beauty bulldozed my heart. It still does.
So, yeah, maybe I’ll be cremated. The thought of burial is troubling, mostly thanks to “Twilight Zone” episodes I watched as a kid. Cryonics is intriguing. Though I can’t afford to pay for my corpse to be suspended in liquid nitrogen with the low-prob hope that scientists may one day jump-start my heart and zap me back into fuzzy cognizance.
Death decisions are hard. And that’s without lotteries.
Dateline: Paris. Authorities started a draw this week for a chance to win a burial plot in cemeteries that are the resting places for cultural luminaries.
According to the BBC, in addition to Morrison and Wilde, lottery winners could be graveyard neighbours with Edith Piaf, Frederic Chopin, Marcel Proust, Edgar Degas, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, François Truffaut and Simone de Beauvoir.
Imagine getting into a car crash and suddenly Sartre is yammering about existentialism.
As CNN reported on Wednesday, the contest aims to “restore tombs that have fallen into disrepair” while giving Parisians a chance “to secure one of the sought-after plots.”
Apparently, it is harder to book a resting place in Paris than to reserve a table at Plénitude. As for the cost: “Each existing tomb will be available to buy for 4,000 euros ($4,600), with the winners also on the hook for restoration costs. They will then be able to buy a lease, the cost of which starts at 976 euros ($1,120) for a 10-year contract and increases to 17,668 euros ($20,290) for the right to rest there in perpetuity.”
(In Canadian dollars, that’s more than $6,400, $1,500 and $28,600.)
Lease? What happens if your Visa expires after you do? Do they exhume your remains and give the grave to someone with better credit? And if loved ones visit on your death anniversary, is it customary to hum “Waltz in E minor” while passing Chopin’s tomb?
This is strange. But according to my AI assistant — I named her Halle Berry — this is not unprecedented. Unless Halle is hallucinating, the U.K. had a “burial lottery” in the 18th century. Chicago had a “graveyard lottery” in the 1950s. There have been “death insurance raffles” and “win a funeral” radio contests.
That’s how much we love lotteries — we will enter one when the prize is death.
Speaking of lotteries, congratulations to “Aric from Oshawa.” Aric won the Jays 50-50 World Series draw. Aric is now $25,010,057 richer. Aric can one day afford to be buried in the Rogers Centre under the pitcher’s mound.
All this funeral talk is depressing. But the only guarantee in life is death. I’ve been writing with a heavy heart the past week as my mom was in the hospital. It’s getting harder for me to deny time and disease. Please say a prayer for her.
She used to be my biggest fan and would email at 5 a.m. every day to discuss the day’s column subject. Sometimes she would agree. Sometimes she would strongly disagree and chastise me for being too mean while adding that is not the way she raised me.
Who knew mom would one day be so protective of Selena Gomez?
I miss those emails. I took them for granted. Then one day they stopped arriving.
Thursday is her 85th birthday. Due to advanced Alzheimer’s, she no longer reads. But I’ll write it anyway: “Happy birthday, Mom. I love you. Thank you for everything.”
I apologize for the abrupt mood change. I have all kinds of dark thoughts ricocheting around my heart and brain right now. Maybe I’ll distract myself by scrolling “Oprah’s Favourite Things 2025 List,” which just dropped. Oprah does offer decent holiday gift ideas that are not as bonkers as the Goop stuff pushed by Gwyneth Paltrow.
Coco & Dash Cora Rechargeable Mini Lamp? My daughters could use one of those while away at university. Maybe I should buy myself “Oprah’s ‘The Life You Want’ Nightly Reflections Journal.”
First entry: “It doesn’t matter if you are buried near Jim Morrison or Oscar Wilde. All that matters is the memories you leave for those who bulldozed your heart.”
