Dedicated to Mama Williams

My mother researches everything. This is cold, hard fact. Some people's parents are pretty shabby with the internet. Not my mom. She can navigate that sh*t like a motherf**(bleep, bleep). So it should be no surprise to me that telling her about this class should trigger a huge influx of information in my inbox. Still, I was utterly overwhelmed by her desire to share with me everything her and the internet have to offer about death. Without further ado, this blog post is dedicated to MY MOM.

My parents still live together in the house they raised me in, in Calgary. They have to love me from afar, so much of our interaction occurs via sporadic telephone calls and consistent emails. The great thing about this is that I almost always have a written record of the things they share with me. Like I've already stated, my mom is especially current in my inbox. The hilarious thing is that I shared my blog link first and solely with my dad and immediately heard back about it from mom almost the same day. Didn't hear much initially from my pops, though I know he's been keeping up with it. Mom's first impression was of pride, and also to inquire about clove cigarettes - whoops. (MOM: They are Indonesian, clove + tobacco cigarettes - our version of an occasional celebratory cigar among friends). She also admitted using urbandictionary to understand my abbreviated shorthand (re: totes). Hilarious. And resourceful!

I find it neat, though not unexpected, that my mother and I have similar views about death. We were both initially drawn to cremation as the ideal method for body disposal following death, especially if burial was the only other option. She, like me, finds burial in a casket somewhat unnecessary. Her view is that the body is only a vessel for one's spirit, and that the spirit remains in the lives of those they have touched through memories and through the family they may have propagated. Knowledge and insight have recently opened my eyes to more eco-friendly modes of burial or body disposal which I was thrilled to show my mother. For her viewing pleasure:

A girl in a mushroom suit, talking about her genious idea
Natural Burials care of Wikipedia

And also, for shock factor and perhaps teaching mom something new, the Tibetan Sky Burial!

In addition, my mom had some blog prompts of her own for me (after waiting impatiently for my next posting and deciding I had simply run out of topics). Another classmate might find these useful, or at least intriguing:

- discuss popular Western funeral music (examples here and here)

- discuss funerary traditions involving music in other cultures

- compare varying burial traditions cross-culturally (I digress, she might know more about these than I do)

- talk about hospice care centres and the change from life to death (see here and here)

- mention this: DEATH CAFES (I plan on doing so at a later date, thanks ma)

She even did follow-up research on my monument analysis essay after I'd received my grade and showed it to her. She used ancestry.ca and findagrave.com to hash out the backstories of the families behind a few monuments in Pioneer Square, Victoria that had missing inscriptions. What a crafty lady.