Previous Next

Michelle Cromer - Exit Strategy

Description:

Go to Michelle's web site
Exit Strategy
Thinking Outside the Box

On September 5, 2001, my son Sam was born prematurely. He was about as sick as any human can be. His nurse, who had apparently honed her bedside manner at a boot camp for Marine recruits, flatly told me that he wasn’t going to live. A priest giving last rites to the baby next to him took one look at Sam and asked if I wanted him to give Sam last rites too, as long as he was there.

Death is not something I had thought a great deal about. My parents are still living, as are all of my siblings; at the time, so were all of my friends. As for me, I was healthy and had no intention of dying anytime soon, thank you. But as the hours stretched into days and then weeks and Sam continued to struggle for life, the death of a loved one became something I had to confront seriously for the first time.

Sam made it out, Nurse Ratchet got fired, and I started to do a great deal of thinking about dying and death. My friends' parents began to pass away, and as I went to their funerals I noticed that there was something about each ceremony that gave it its own personality to distinguish it from the others. In the old days, all funerals were pretty much the same, because grief-stricken families usually left it to the funeral director and the minister, priest or rabbi to do the organizing and set the tone. Everything was done according to tradition and ritual. What I noticed now was that my friends were taking more of a hand in crafting the ceremony, giving each loved one's send-off an individual flair and personal meaning.

Leave it to my generation, the Baby Boomers, to take control, not only organizing our parents' funerals but even planning our own in advance. We're a demographic so totally accustomed to center stage that we will never give it up without some fanfare. Now that I think back, I believe this trend first appeared in Lawrence Kasdan’s 1983 homage to my generation, The Big Chill. After the priest announces that a college friend will play one of the deceased’s favorite songs, JoBeth Williams’ character, Karen, solemnly sits down at the church organ and hits the classic opening chords of the Rolling Stones' “You Can't Always Get What You Want.” As that Sixties anthem accompanied the funeral procession, I wasn't the only Boomer in the audience who thought, "Now that's the way to go out." In 2005, Hunter Thompson, legendary gonzo journalist and counterculture hero of my generation, even left behind a demand for his ashes to be shot out of cannon — a plan made possible by his friend and fan, Johnny Depp, the actor who portrayed Thompson in the film version of his famous book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Tags

death, authors, strategy, exit, cromer