Deathwish 048: Devon
“I want my ashes to dance, to root, to get kicked along and blown about”
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I don’t want a headstone. Static and heavy, it would belie the kinetic person that I am. I’m more an ashes-along-the-hiking-path or along-the-shore person. Put my remains where they will be more quickly reabsorbed, where “I” won’t feel shut in (because I’m still not sure where “I” will be). And if there’s no “then” or “I,” after death (which I’m pretty sure there isn’t), I want my elements to be able to return to the big Earthly repository for re-use. Since my worst death would be locked-in syndrome, brain spinning away, but body unable to respond, I want my ashes to dance, to root, to get kicked along and blown about, to stick to a loping dog’s fur like a burr. The final problem with a headstone would be choosing what it would depict. I never got a tattoo—not because I don’t think they’re beautiful, but because I knew I would never be able to settle on a single image (or even a series) to represent me. Unless it could contain an endless video loop of everything I found beautiful or meaningful, it would have to read: “She was herself and her opposite: loud, myriad, motile.”
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