If you want to travel affordably with a real potential for adventure, you could do worse than waiting until you’re ashes – and get an insider view of the US Postal Service in the process. This opportunity could be yours with the purchase of Label 139. Cremated Remains.
(“Label 139” is a great name for a goth record label)
Amid covid and general changes in attitude, cremation (and the shipping of created cremains), has become much more common. Common enough that the USPS has had trouble keeping up with demands for the packaging.
USPS’s guide explains that the ashes must be packed in a “sift-proof container” – lest you risk having an inadvertent Aerial Scattering, the technical term for throwing ashes from a plane. Also, my second entry into the “death terms that should be band names by now”
As for adventure, there probably won’t be any. But you never know! The podcast Last Seen has an episode about the very roundabout journey one particular urn took.
It’s a great listen, no doubt because it’s a fascinating mystery. But it also shows how personal and biased we can be when it comes to the remembrance and memorializing. Every culture, every family, every person has a unique way of confronting grief and loss. And each person has their own idea of how they want to be remembered.
We rarely have control over our own memories, so it’s quite audacious to believe we can control others’… but we always try.
Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
Sir Thomas Browne
Death Becomes You 