#15
What should I wear? Should I put my face on? Do I wear shoes, or not? Sandals or Closed toe? I suppose it doesn’t matter in the long run. I’m just glad for the “good death” I will have experienced, free of pain and suffering, given to me through Hospice and M.A.I.D.
The temperature for cremation is about 1400 to 1800 degrees F. That amount of heat breaks the bonds between the molecules of flesh and bone. Sixty-Five percent of my mass will go up the chimney of the crematorium as water vapor – clouds of steam that will mix with the oxygen outside and be breathed in by passing birds, sleeping cats, pissing dogs, and people.
As the temperature rises, Carbon and CO2 will escape up the chimney and enter the atmosphere to be absorbed by plants and animals.
All but a few of the atoms that were “me” will go up that same chimney. What is left in the crematorium chamber – phosphate and calcium - will remain as bone fragments – NOT ASHES! There’s not an ash in the whole lot! Why cremains are called ashes is beyond me. Perhaps it’s a sanitized description of “me” left over from the Bible – that “dust to dust, ashes to ashes” thingy.
It is said a person’s cremains will weigh about the same weight they had when they were born. Interesting! And though my bones of calcium stay solid, I know their atoms are ancient…leftovers from past lives of others… and stars…never to be changed, but to be transplanted into new life one day.
Having lived and worked in Italy for 40+ years, I’m familiar with relics – bone fragments enshrined in a glass case in a home, a museum, or church – even a small shrine built along the road. I’ve often fanaticized about the person whose bone fragments or other items were enshrined. Who were they? What were their secret desires? Did they have a good life….a good death?
These thoughts have inspired me to concoct THE RELIC PROJECT to be unveiled in September 2026. For this “after life/death” project, I commissioned 7 stone carvers, who are friends, to carve a “bed” of stone, on which will rest a bone fragment(s) retrieved from my cremains. How they go about this will be up to them. They will all receive identical pieces of white Italian marble, and may choose the bone fragment(s) to use in their creation. They will be paid for their work in advance, and their creations must be completed by September 1, 2026. The idea was inspired by a sculpture created by my friend, and stone carver, Brian Barreto. In the photo below, you see a bone fragment resting on a rumpled piece of cloth, lying on a base of stone. There is no obligation for the invited sculptors to mimic or use this idea. It is only a starting place to help them understand what I consider a relic, in a sculptural form.
Throughout my SAGA* with Pancreatic Cancer, I have endeavored to engage friends in discussions about my journey – the good, the bad, the ugly and the funny–‘ The Full Monty’. This is changing, of course. Since writing about my saga these last 10 months, I’ve read many confessions of cancer patients, who want to share what their experience has been. They are not all positive – nor are they negative. But they inform, and remove some of the taboos that have kept them from sharing a somewhat private part of their lives – freeing them to enjoy, and share, those small fragments of time, when life was good.
The sculptures produced for THE RELIC PROJECT, will be on public display sometime in the Fall of 2026.
With gratitude, Peace and Love - TJ