He’s gone but dying someday to return

Before leaving the Pittsburgh area last year to start a new chapter of our lives in California, my wife and I bought a plot in Sewickley Cemetery. Nothing against Pittsburgh in life, but it is generally agreed to be a great place when you are dead.

Next time you are dead, you could ask Andy Warhol about that. As you may know, the artist was born in Pittsburgh, went to school locally and moved to New York City, where he spent his famous life. In death, he came back to be buried in a cemetery in suburban Bethel Park.

As much as we the living can tell, it has worked out well for him. His grave has become a place of pilgrimage for his fans and the curious alike.

As one who expects eventually to enjoy an eternal rest of well-deserved obscurity, I believe that Sewickley Cemetery is the best place for me. If nothing else, the location will be a comeuppance for the grouches who were glad I left the area. Huh! You’ll never get rid of me.

More than that, I look forward to being in a beautiful place among dearly missed friends, who eventually will gravitate to the same quiet neighborhood. Perhaps gravitate is the wrong word, as the historic cemetery is at the top of the hill overlooking the town. An act of anti-gravity is required to get there, but I assume ghosts can easily manage that.

As to dust to dust, ashes to ashes, my wife and I are solely going the ashes-to-ashes route. Cremation is our preferred option for being deceased. The little plot we chose is suitably scenic, among grass and trees with a view of the Ohio River, which admittedly includes the tank farm on the far bank—not something one would normally die for.

Still, in our old life we loved going up to the cemetery on dog walks. Dogs love cemeteries. I suppose they are delighted to discover that humans bury bones, too.

For my part, I look forward while dead to those nights when the shades of old Sewickley come out. Blessedly, Sewickley is a place where cocktail and dinner parties are still respected social institutions. There’s no reason to believe that the town’s dead people are prepared to give up their old customs lying down.

It is said that on quiet nights you can hear the pop of wine corks and clink of martini swizzle sticks among the tombs up on the hill. Typically, the people who say this have just been to a cocktail party.

You may think from today’s subject that I have become morbid or have a slight cold, and that being a man—and therefore a wuss, in the telling of women—I think that I am about to die.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I feel fit and well and, if I drop dead tomorrow, that will be a lesson to all of us, but a surprise especially to me.

No, what set me to these grave thoughts was a story in my local paper here, the Monterey Herald. It seems a 90-year-old lady named Darby Worth from nearby Carmel Valley wants to be buried in her front yard so she can become compost for her garden. However, the law frowns on this. And we think the dead are stiff!

She has made a friend of Katrina Spade, the founder of the Urban Death Project, which seeks a more environmentally friendly way of burial by turning bodies into compost, though not necessarily in front yards. Her plan calls for three-story facilities that would do the job, without all the embalming fluid, wood and steel in coffins that have no place in the earth.

Ms. Spade recently gave a speech at California State University, Monterey Bay, but unfortunately I missed it, having some business still among the living. From what I have learned from the group’s website — www.urbandeathproject.org — it is an intriguing concept. The compost so obtained would be used to grow flowers and trees, not food, which is reassuring, because nobody wants a Cannibal Salad.

The idea, however, touches a nerve with me. I live in dread that my wife will put me out in the recyclables bin when I expire, and I don’t want to be compost quite so soon. There’s also the concern that if this becomes a trend, undertakers will become unemployed, and they are gloomy enough already.

Besides, where would we walk our dogs?