From Pfiffer to Fertilizer: My Eco-Friendly Exit Plan

By Jim Pfiffer

I’ve changed my mind about what I want to happen to my body after I die.

As an aging Boomer, death planning has officially replaced sex as my late-night obsession. I have to think about and plan for such things. It’s part of growing old – right up there with discovering hair growing in mysterious places, injuring my back from simply standing up too quickly and owning a pillbox organizer the size of a deep-sea fishing tackle box.

 I’ve always been opposed to traditional funerals and burials. For thousands of dollars, I am pumped full of chemicals and laid out like a burial buffet for everyone to line up at the funeral parlor and murmur lies like, “He looks so natural, like he’s asleep,” and “Doesn’t he look peaceful?”

Bullshit! It looks like I’m dead and stuffed full of preservatives, artificial flavors, and FD&C Red No. 3 – the human equivalent of a Hostess Twinkie wearing a suit and tie. And I HAD BETTER look peaceful. I’m friggin’ dead, dude. You can’t get any more peaceful than that.

Initially, I wanted to be cremated and have my ashes scattered in the Chemung River, where I’ve spent most of my adult life kayaking and fishing. It holds special meaning for me. You can say that I have river water flowing through my veins, and it’s so intense that my neoprene water shoes reek of sweaty feet and stale river water. (I can’t bring them into the house, the stench wilts houseplants and sets off carbon dioxide alarms.)

I discussed my after-death plans with my wife, Shelley, who will almost certainly outlive me because she’s 13 years younger and healthier, eats kale voluntarily and can pronounce “quinoa” correctly.

But I’ve changed my mind about cremation/ashes spreading for three reasons:

1. Shelley could get arrested for polluting the river. (“Ma’am, is that your husband’s femur floating by the Grove Street Boat Launch?”)
2. Cremation doesn’t actually turn your whole body into ash.
3. Cremation is expensive – $1,000 for the no-service “burned-to-a-crisp” option and up to $6,000 for the deluxe package where everyone gets to stare at a fancy urn full of me and pretend they’re sad.

I didn’t know about Reason No. 2 until I researched cremation:

My soft tissues, organs and fat combust and vaporize into the atmosphere. My bones are then ground down in a machine called a “cremulator” (which sounds like an appliance Ron Popeil should have sold on late-night TV: “But wait, there’s more! It juliennes your loved ones in seconds!” Only $19.95, if you call now!).

Cremation is terrible for the environment. I don’t want my incinerated soft tissue, hard tissue, organs and love handles polluting the air. 

Plus, cremation burns fossil fuels. I don’t want my final act on Earth to turn me into a greenhouse gas smog that smells like a fetid Pfiffer-scented Yankee Candle. What an ash-hole.

If I’m buried or burned, all the electrical and chemical energy I’ve spent a lifetime accumulating drifts off into space as waste.

I want to be recycled. That’s why my new body disposal choice is to go all natural – wrapped in swaddling cloth and buried, no casket, no preservatives, no urns, no creepy “Forever Sleep” pillows under my head.  

I want to be compost in the hereafter – from man to manure.

I made this decision after hearing these words from one of my heroes, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:

“I would request that my body in death be buried, not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.”

That’s perfect. I’ll reprocess myself back into the food chain. My energy goes into the soil, feeding plants, cows eat the plants and eventually, some dude bites into a Big Mac and says, “Hmmm? This reminds me of that Pfiffer dude.”

(Then people could say, Jim Pfiffer, the other white meat.)

Luckily, Shelley agrees with my post-death decision. She only has one request:
“Please be sure you’re wearing those gawd-awful, stinking water shoes when they bury you.”

Done. At least I’ll go back to nature the way I lived – smelling faintly of Chemung River funk.

P.S.: After editing this column, my editor, Bob Jamieson, suggested that I be buried upright, thereby using less land. “You’d forever be a stand-up guy,” he wrote. 

P.S.S.: I responded, “Yo Bob. I’m the comedian here. Keep your jokes to yourself.”

Get more of Jim Pfiffer’s humor columns at his “Full of Wit” blog https://fullofwitblog.wordpress.com/. Learn more about illustrator Filomena Jack at www.FilomenaJackStudio.com.