Have You Made Your Arrangements II?

Grant’s Tomb

The mourning process is constantly changing. Just as attitudes towards sex have evolved over the years, so too has mourning. Once an activity associated with sadness and remembrance most mourning today is about real estate, with a good deal of remembrance being handled in The Cloud. When people think of mausoleums they are often frightened away by images of Grant’s Tomb, but today the mausoleum is fast becoming the burial vessel of choice since it offers space for the kind of amenities that are guaranteed to attract loved ones. Even though most mausoleums can’t travel,  many can be like RV’s to the extent that the most modern ones come equipped with kitchens, bedrooms, showers, televisions and even small gyms (which allow visitors to remain aerobic while they are paying their respects). Moore’s law predicts that microprocessors will double their capacity every twenty four months, resulting in the fact that increasingly large amounts of data can be stored on smaller and smaller chips. This means that most computers can handle memorializing on a greater scale than ever before. You don’t have to worry about remembering or being remembered when you know there's a computer taking care of the whole process for you. Moore’s law can also be metaphorically applied to the question of remains, for those who are not interested in being interred in either a mausoleum, crypt or grave. Modern methods of cremation have allowed for human ashes to be reduced to increasingly smaller units. In one recent case a young woman carried the remains of her recently departed aunt in her pierced navel.