disturbing things you can learn in the course of a saturday

they often don't bury the people who die in winter until the spring. when you think about frozen ground and additional cost and such, i suppose this makes sense. new york just passed a law requiring cemeteries to offer winter burial; but i've been to many of those small town cemeteries (and am related to at least one inhabitant of each of them, i swear) and the arguments about the danger of digging winter graves on unstable hillsides and collapsing graves seem pretty logical to me. even still, it really gives me the creeps and reinforces my desire to be cremated*. it's... well, it is not something i have ever considered before. and, considering it now, i kind of wish i had remained in the dark.

i suppose i should be less disturbed about this and more disturbed that my reason for considering the topic at all is that my great aunt just passed away (and will be buried in june). but... i'm not. i have a very callous reaction to death. besides, someone's dead every time we go back to new york anyways, and i'm probably distantly related to them (my ancestors were pretty original settlers around canandaigua). this one was closer, and i feel like i should feel it more. after all, i'm apparently the aunt irene of my generation**. but i don't. and that's the part that worries me more than the actual passing. i even wrote my "share your pain" ethnography on the subject in christine's class*** in undergrad (back when it was unusual to call a professor by their first name, ha!). anyway; people are temporary. not seeing them because they've died is just a more permanent form of the not seeing them than i'm used to. it's vaguely sad. but i move away. this just means they move away from me, and don't come back. i have never been able to make it feel more serious than that. it's not really an ability i'm looking forward to so much as i'm just guilty about it's absence. it's the sort of thing where, in a decade or so when i'm completely off my rocker, people will slap their heads and say "of COURSE she's a sociopath. she's never even cared when people DIE."

sorry about the abundance of joyful thoughts. it's raining. blame that.


* in fact, the only real argument against cremation in my mind is how cool headstones are and that i would like one. well, and it pisses me off that you're still required to buy a coffin. damn mortuary cartels.
** apparently this is somehow genetic, as we've had at least three generations of extremely bitter and demanding women. the ironic part is that i don't know the others terribly well. you'd think we'd have something to talk about.
*** i have had at least three christine references in the past week. this also worries me.