Last summer I was desperately searching for a job. I wanted to be a “knowledge worker” like my friends in Silicon Valley, who reported for duty from the comfort of their homes even before the pandemic.

A friend suggested a site used by gig workers all over the world. 

As I tossed my bid into the ring, I thought, no one else is gonna want this job, so I’ve got a chance at it. Shortly afterwards, a gentleman from India hired me to write marketing copy for GetUrns. And so, I found myself, at 3am on hot summer nights, writing hundreds of words about cremation urns, at 8 cents apiece, for a woman-owned business in Texas.

After some preliminary research, I learned about the “Death Positive” movement. Awareness of death, your own and, perhaps worse, of those you love, makes life sweeter. It makes you more grateful for the blessing of each breath.

Coming from a long line of schoolteachers and librarians, I searched for magic words crafted to relieve suffering. Quotes from CS Lewis and Oscar Wilde to Emily Dickinson and Marilyn Monroe; from the English Book of Common Prayer, to Japanese mystic poetry and Cherokee proverbs.

Words that could soften loss, or offer crumbs of comfort when the great mystery of Death arrives. That final visitor that spirits away our beloved family members, friends, pets, and yes, one day, each of us.

Most beautiful quote: Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet and winner of the 1913 Nobel prize in literature.

“Death is not extinguishing the light, it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

Most practical: Memento mori (remember you will die) as Socrates and the Stoics who came after him said. To quote the most famous of them, Marcus Aurelius, “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

So, I was ready. From cremation jewelry to biodegradable scattering urns, to large and small amphoras similar to what you’d find in an archeological dig. Small keepsake urns with “just a pinch” of remains, tealight urns, abstract urns with space for glowing candles inside. From Italian fiore inlaid urns, to colorful paper cannisters, from ceramic and wood to aluminum and stainless steel and marble, urns were in. Urns were much of my writing life that summer..

Life being what it is, as I began exploring the marketing angle of death, my father, at 93, began his final decline. He was fortunate at the end to enter a state of grace and fearlessness, even humor. When I sang him a hymn, I commented I should keep my day job, and he smiled.

He let go at 5pm on a Friday, quitting time, with my cousin holding his hand. I saw him as a young man, jumping off a moving train, and heading towards the sunset, or maybe, just across town and into the nearest pool hall.

I was writing about walnut, cherry and oak urns the day before he died. “a time-honored wooden urn is a classic piece of funerary art. Trees sustain the planet; they shelter us in life, comfort us in death. They symbolize resurrection, sleeping in winter, to return restored in spring.”

Suddenly, I was a customer. The man from India was kind, though no one offered me a discount, and in simple Midwest style, I slipped my Dad’s cremains into the Mississippi River one fine morning last October.

The work went on.

I reached some new level of dark humor when I began to recommend buying your own urn early, like a burial plot. “Why not choose your own elegant marble urn today? In addition to relieving your family of this task, meditating on your own urn can be liberating!”

Full disclosure: I have a ceramic pot, painted with pink bamboo fronds, and tiny golden birds in flight. Right now, it holds ragged prayer flags and my last dog’s collar. Someday, it will hold what is left of my body. At least until someone can take my body, transformed by 1800 degree heat into bits of bone and powder, to the Pacific Ocean.

This later stage of life, when the monster is about to emerge from under the bed, is a good time for contemplation. As we age and ripen into fuller consciousness, memories come back, streaming into the cracks that let light into our minds.

Why do I remember this now? I wonder.

For all of us, some moments are preserved in amber.

I remember…When I was in my 20’s, I was in love with a nice boy, handsome and funny. One warm summer evening we went with his parents to see a comedy show at the Hungry Eye in San Francisco. 

At intermission as we walked down Columbus Avenue, a very disoriented lady of the evening wobbled past us in a torn tutu, and not much more.  She was talking to herself. 

Embarrassed, I said something about her to my friend’s dad. “Ah,” he responded gently, “Everyone is innocent.”

That is when I looked down and saw the row of numbers tattooed on his left forearm.

I knew that, as a little boy, my boyfriend’s father had been at Auschwitz. And yet, it was in this particular moment that I saw that tattoo.

I’ve puzzled over that story for years.

Now, I see it as an inspiring brush with profound compassion.

The Stoics also said, Memento vivere, remember to live. In order to live well, we need to transmute Life’s suffering; of injustice, of grief and loss, of aging, dying and death. Within our brief lifespans, we can find the shimmering golden light of peace, and even, sometimes, joy.

Many, many words have been written about this process.

What works best for me is what American environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote:

“If I had influence with the good fairy who…presides… over…children, I would ask that she grant to each child a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life…”

And, for those of us who want the ULTIMATE wisdom, there is Theodore Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, who gave us these words to live by:

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”