What Is The Tallest Cemetery In The World?

What will they think of next?  Just when I think I've heard of everything along comes the tallest vertical cemetery in the world (per the Guiness Book of World Records)!  You can actually go online and look it up.  The Memorial Necropole Ecumenica III (MCE) is a 32 story high rise building in Santos, Brazil.  Talk about being closer to heaven.  There is a view of the legendary Santos FC stadium (where Pele played).  There are burial spaces on all 32 floors and eventually 32,000+ people can be buried (roughly 150 tombs per floor that each fit 6 people).  Depending on location tombs can be rented for between $5,900 and $21,000 for 3 years.  And then there are private family burial tombs with memorial rooms that are available for $105,000.  It's set alone at the base of a small hill covered by a lush rainforest.  There is a lobby, a small restaurant, a chapel, a lagoon, a peacock garden, waterfalls throughout,  a parrot and toucan aviary, a goldfish pond with a fountain.  It has become a tourist attraction.  Because it is so hot in Brazil bodies must be interred within 24 hours so MCE is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  MCE has Brazil's first private crematorium; the casket is on a stage and at the end of the ceremony it is slowly lowered into the floor.  This is perhaps strange, but it is true.

What Happens When A Bronze Vase is Stolen From A Flat Bronze Memorial Marker At A Cemetery?

Apparently stealing bronze vases from cemeteries across America has become a big problem.  They are easy to steal.  Thieves attempt to take them to salvage yards for cash.  A large component of bronze vases is copper.  Copper prices are down about 20% from their recent all-time historic high price.  Couple that with a weak economy, and vases from flat bronze memorial markers look like easy money.  Salvage yards know not to accept cemetery vases but not all salvage yards comply unfortunately.  At retail now it would cost about $600 to buy a bronze vase.  They are roughly 10 inches tall and 3 inches around.  So they are clunky and mildly heavy.  Some cemeteries will replace the vases for you at no cost.  Many will not because they don't want to spend the money.  But it's good to ask and know what's included in your Perpetual Care at a cemetery.  This is quite personal as thieves are stealing these from memorials of deceased and buried people.  Ah greed and desperation.  This issue made the front page of the Wall Street Journal this week: "In Cemeteries, Sky-High Metal Prices Lead to Grave Situation."

Expensive Veterinarians and What Happens When Your Pet Dies, Part III?

Recently another one of our pets, Charlie, died.  Charlie was a male, white Maine Coon Cat and he was 12 years old.  Charlie was not plump and soft and fuzzy.   He was always skinny, standoffish and ornery, but the 2 of us liked one another.  He was mostly an indoor cat.  Sometimes in warmer weather he would go outside for a bit, but not too far from the back door.  Recently he went out and did not return on his own.  Usually he would be ready to run back inside after about 1/2 an hour or so.  At one point after he left he came close to the back door when I opened it but did not come inside.  After 3 days we saw him outside about 20 yards from the back door.  My wife patiently talked to him and eventually she was able to scoop him up and bring him inside.  His eyes looked vacant and distant.  He seemed skinnier and he had not had any of his medications while he was away.   He seemed to be on death's door.  Had he gone away to die?
 So my wife took him to her family veterinarian.  Poor Charlie was full of maggots.  When he came home he could barely walk, most of his hair was shaved, and he had a feeding tube.  My wife mostly fed him for about 1 month.  He did not seem to improve in that time.  The bill from the vet was about $8,000.00!!  It started at about $1400.00 and slowly but surely crept up.  I thought $1400.00 was a lot, but $8,000 ultimately.!?  And then one morning I came downstairs and Charlie was dead.  So again what is a veterinarian's responsibility to counsel against such a bill?  Should Charlie have been put down immediately?  Was the vet only fattening his wallet?

How do you bury a pet?

Another pet bit the dust yesterday.  That's 5 in the last year!  Three dogs and two cats have died, all of them older.  They are all buried in my yard.  (Many cities/towns, etc. do not allow this.  There are pet cemeteries where pets can be buried, for a price.)  Tyler was a too skinny grey 18-year-old cat.  He did not look a day over 3 or 4 months old.  My brother-in-law dropped him off at our house a few months ago because he's fixing his place up for sale.  My wife guessed that Tyler was here to die, and so he did. And he smelled.  B.O.  And he meowed, loudly.  None of the surviving pets liked Tyler.  I liked him.  My 2 year old son loved him as Tyler would not run away from him.  Now Tyler's gone.  We thought he was ready to die a few days ago so we took him to my wife's family vet.  I told the vet that Tyler seemed to be ready to die.  The vet disagreed and suggested that we do some tests on Tyler to the tune of $851.00!  He told me this with a smile on his face. (My brother-in-law was listening in on the speaker function on my cell phone.  He fell off his chair when he heard the dollar amount.)  What do you do in such a situation?  Do you spend whatever to try to prolong your pet's life?  Should the vet tell you that you will be spending a lot of money potentially in vain?   What is right and wrong here?   My brother-in-law asked for a less costly option.  This came to $250.00.  I've heard that veterinarian pricing is going up and up.  

Love and Death and George Jones

Love and death.   You can die so many ways: in war, driving, flying, accident, cancer, old age, etc.  George Jones sings a haunting song called He Stopped Loving Her Today.  His tone is haunting and pained.  It's a song of unrequited love.  He loves her.  She no longer loves him.  He keeps on loving her through the years.  She moves on.  Finally after years he smiles.  But he's dead and smiling in his coffing. So in death he finally stops loving her:  "This time he's over her for good."  Love can hurt and can be painful.  Can it lead to death?

Vampires and Zombies

Death.  No one wants to think about it or talk about it.  Until it happens and then we all scramble in a fog to take care of things.  And death is expensive.  But now everywhere we look we see books, movies, shows about vampires, zombies, etc.  Basically they are dead people.  There are lots of them, some pretty and some ugly.  And they have become very popular.  It's been posited that all of us are one or the other basically.  And if somehow you are neither, say a regular person, you are "dead meat" (per Heather Havrilesky).

Corpses As Dolls

There's so much to consider about death, real and imagined.  And then there are just plain macabre stories.     In Russia a 45-year-old man was arrested today for digging up corpses.  He dressed them up doll-like in stockings and dresses and placed them around his apartment.  The corpses were all female and they had died years ago between the ages of 15 to 26.  He made one look like a teddy bear.  He sometimes slept in a coffin or on graveyard benches.  Imagine  him actually digging up the bodies and then carrying them back to his apartment.  How did he keep the bodies from decomposing?  It was his parents who discovered the bodies.  Norman Bates of Psycho comes to mind.   I have heard many stories of people not reporting a loved ones' death because they did not want to be a lonely survivor.  Often the survivor will dress up the deceased, talk to them and prop them up in chairs, etc.

Talking about macabre, how about a 36-year-old woman in the Bronx.  She was caring for a 76-year-old man in her apartment.  He died in the apartment.  She was afraid she would get in trouble so she wrapped his body in plastic and put it in a suitcase.   She then took the suitcase to the rear of an abandoned building nearby and left the suitcase there.  She placed a small handwritten sign on the suitcase: "Rest in Peace."

Love and Death and Murder in Georgetown

Viola Drath, a 91-year-old Washington D.C.  socialite, was found dead in August of this year by her 47-year-old husband in her Georgetown townhouse.  Shortly thereafter he was arrested for murder.  They had been married for 20 years and are known for the soirees they hosted for Washington's A-listers.   His name is Albrecht Gero Muth.  He is a German who claims to be an Iraqi army general.  How many times have we seen similar stories?:  much older men, much younger women/much older women, much younger men.   Most of these seem to be odd and somewhat perverse relationships that are fundamentally flawed and often really revolve around money and greed.

Death/Ghost Humor

I could not resist this death/ghost cartoon.  Death is usually considered grim.  But there is a lot of funny humor about death and ghosts.  For those who don't know, the children's book Goodnight Moon is considered a classic.

What Happens When Your Pet Dies?

We all love our pets, most of the time.  When they die it can be very very tough.  How much would you spend to keep a sick pet alive?  $0, $500, $5,000, $20,000, etc.  When a pet is older and sick is it the vet's responsibility to counsel you to not spend a lot of money trying to keep your pet alive?  Apparently often a great deal of money can be spent and then the pet dies anyway.  Sometimes you may be able to spend thousands and often not.  Some of us will try almost anything to keep a pet alive.  It's personal.  A pet can be a family member like a child.

When death occurs there are pet cemeteries where you can bury your pet.  A plot will cost about $500 to $1200 depending on the size of the pet.  You will need to buy a coffin.  Most are polyethylene.  They will cost from $200-$700 at a cemetery depending on size.  You can buy them for not much money online but the cemetery may give you a hard time.  That can be overcome.  Usually memorialization is optional.  A memorial at the cemetery will cost you anywhere from $700 and up into the thousands depending on size, etc.  You can buy them for much lower prices online.

Typically if you would like to cremate your pet the vet can handle that for you.  Not all vets have a crematorium.   Those that do can actually do an individual cremation for you.  Many pet crematoriums handle group cremations of pets.  Some people like to keep their cremated pet(s) somewhere in their home.  Some don't want to ever see their pets in any form after death.

And some people like to bury their pets in their yards.  A lot of towns, cities, etc. do not allow this.

Do You Dread Death?

We all are going to die.  Do you dread death?  My computer died for 2 days.  Actually my internet connection died for almost 2 days. That was tough for me as I am so connected to the internet for work. But today both are back and alive and well.  Thank goodness.


Tuesday was All Saint's Day.  Yesterday was All Soul's Day.  In Mexico it is Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.  It exists by other names in other nations and cultures.  Graves of love ones are cleaned up and decorated.  Often home altars are created with pictures of your beloved dead, symbols and tokens of their lives.  You might gather and tell stories, even jokes and anecdotes from the lives of those you've lost.  In America we just don't like to think about death.  We often never visit a loved one's grave after a burial.  Henri Nouwen observed that people we love become part of us.  When they die, we feel diminished.  But as we let go of them "they become part of our 'members' and as we 're-member' them, they become our guides on our spiritual journey."  But only if we do remember them at least once a year,  think about them, but/and then get on with our lives.  (Thanks to Bill Tully, Rector at St. Bart's Episcopal Church, New York, NY.)