Coffin Shopping

I'm enjoying my Six Feet Under: Season Two. To tell the truth, I've always been a happy, shiny, morbid person. Death has fascinated me for far too long.

I had some early exposure to death, so maybe it just intrigued me. My lack of understanding death, though, has definitely fuelled that. Funnily, all my exposures to death were always in a somewhat disconnected manner. A classmate, a far-away relative, that sort of thing. I had a "that sucks" mentality about it, but it never did hit home.

That is, of course, until I, like everyone eventually, encountered the big-D "Death." Suddenly, that hazy loss paled in comparison to this new experience of utter abandonment. I finally "got it."

To completely digress, I learned of the Korean tradition of "death days," a few years ago, back in the bad old days when I taught ESL. A client's father was marking his parents' death day with a massive vat of saki and all the decadent accoutrements, and I was asked to be a part of it.

Many sakis later, I understood the reasoning behind the mix of morbidity and memorializing, and always thought I'd do the same one day.

However, I'm not sure it'll fly here among the Westerners. "Hi, there. I'm celebrating the day that the tumour finally took 'er down. Come and celebrate the demise of dear old Mom. Be here at 7."

Something tells me the appetizers'll have to be freaking amazing to draw a crowd to that one. Nachos?

But at least I have my Six Feet Under DVDs--a little grief, a little humour, a little philosophy, all nicely packaged in a box, replete with remote control-interactivity offering both "pause" and "play" options, to substitute for the utter lack of control I actually possess over my life. All for the low, low price of $35.99. Why, what more could I ask for?