On The Wrong Side of the Lawn. . .

You Can't Bring it With You.

I think about my own demise fairly often.  Not in a neurotic, Woody Allen sence, worrying about bus accidents and falls from great heights; more like how a long-distance runner contemplates a finish line.  The manner of death seems less important than the results of the life lived.  Questions arise.  Who would attend my funeral?  What would people say about me in eulogies?  Who would do the cattering?  And, to get to the topic at hand, what would I be burried with?  Which of my possessions would be interred along with my handsome corpse could best represent the person I was in life and the person I will be remembered as in death?  If I am given the choice, I suppose I would instruct my family to include several items that reflected different periods of my earthly experience: from my childhood, a window pane; the thing I stared through instead of listening to elemenary school teachers; from my teen years, a notebook of bad poems, recording my coming of age and including the first and only time a writer had rhymed orange with porridge, from my early adulthood, a collection of empty beer cans; the deposit has been payed and will be given back to me by the Great Bottle-Depot in the Sky.  As for the last quarter of my life, I'd like to be burried with a full, big and beautiful beard.  Not one that I had grown, but someone else's, representing my debt to the intellience of those that inspired me.

On second sober thought. . .
 I feel that if items were to be burried with me, they would probably be chosen by those whom had known me best.  I will ask my wife, parents, siblings and a friend or two what they would drop down onto the lowering casket.  If I were to guess at what they might suggest, I would say a hockey stick, a nice hat, maybe the collected works of C.G. Jung. . . I'll get back to this blog topic shortly. 
END TRANSMISSION

My wife, when asked what articles of interest she would place gently in my grave, replied ''I dunno...some photographs.''  This begged the question why?, to which she responded '' I dunno... how about something you like?  Steak?''
That was as far as I got with my better-half.  My daughter is 1 year old so her response to the same issue of grave goods for Papa was to open her mouth really wide and drool.  I can only assume that this means she wouldn't be able to cope with the bereavement and would place herself in my tomb, forever to gurgle by my side.  My mother was more predictable.  She said that she would dress me in a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater and place a hockey stick in my rigid grip.
So, I suppose that grave goods usually reflect how others see you.  Or they can reflect how you wish to be perceived.  Either way, you're dead.  Amen.
If my long dead Grandfather were alive today he would probably say ''Help! Help! Lemme out of this box!''
So ends this blog entry...
(exeunt with a flourish of trumpets)

Blog One, Jan. 7th, 2011

Happy New Year!
This is the first blog entry for 2011 and the first for Dr. Erin McGuire's Archaeology of Death course at UVic.
This will be an exciting term for me and it will be challenging so I expect encouragement and advice from all of you. . . and cash.  Send cash.
I completed a Viking Archaeology course in the summer with Dr. McGuire and enjoyed that experience immensely.  See you in the future!

(a few days later)
. . . and furthermore...
Mortuary practises in cultures through all times and in all places can shed light on beliefs, lifeways and social complexity/organization.  In short, we can learn a lot about a People and their world by looking at how they deal with their dead.  My interests are wide and varied but I have a keen yen for ritual and ideas of the afterlife and of spiritualities found in cultures, past and present.  I look forward to developing an understanding of just how these intangible aspects of culture are reflected in the archaeological record and how we as archaeologists can interpret them.
I also look forward to reading some of your blogs throughout this course.  Excelsior!