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Shop before you drop >> Buying into death before your own personal D-day by DOMINIQUE RITTER Photos by Gunther Gamper It puts a whole new perspective on finding a new home. You might think it's tough to find a cheap apartment in a good 'hood, but choosing your final resting place is an even more daunting project, one of irreversible permanence.
But, as one funeral parlour "counsellor" explained to me, the baby boomer generation--their "target market"--is croaking in exponential numbers. Just as Levis capitalized on the boomer buying power, so can the expense of their demise create a boon for the death business. I've always been big on planning things in advance and, in my humble opinion, I have a shrewd eye for real estate. So when I saw the ad for Urgel's open house boasting an "entirely glass façade" and "a superb vista," I decided to check it out. It was the perfect opportunity to investigate new housing and the hereafter simultaneously.
Dying to get a deal Call it clever marketing, but the funeral home business is trying to distance itself from the grim reaper. Or at least precede him by several years. The name of the game is the planned funeral: it gives the buyer "a sense of calm and security" and allows the merchant to start cashing in before the body is even cold (15 per cent up front). From your rental coffin to the photo on your urn, the minute details of your death can be plotted and priced well in advance. As the clever pamphleteers at Urgel explain in their "Pre-Arranged Funerals" guide, the main reason to choose your final digs before you croak is sympathy for those you're going to leave behind. The bereaved should be busy mourning you, not preoccupied with choosing your casket. Secondly, the cost of the "arrangements" is set in advance and is immune from inflation, regardless of how long you hold out. And, for the careful budget manager, payments can be made in installments. Thirdly--although they don't get into this in the pamphlet--if you plan it yourself, it means no one is going to screw things up once you're out of the picture. If there is one thing I learned during my visit to the new Urgel funeral complex, there is ample opportunity for things to go terribly wrong.
Funeral home safari
But I was afflicted with acute unease on seeing the array of vessels in which remains remain forevermore. From the pseudo-Egyptian King-Tut-like urns to the richly upholstered coffins (most of which were more lavishly padded and adorned than anything Martha Stewart could conjure up), the gilt and pomp seemed endless. There is nothing like ceremony to bring out the worst in the human aesthetic impulse, and dying will not spare you. My Urgel guide carefully showed me each style of glass, marble and bronze urn. I was particularly intrigued by a series of tiny urns, and supposed they were for small people or perhaps much loved family pets. But I was corrected: they are for a sample to take home. The majority of the death dust is placed in a larger urn to be housed in a niche in the complex itself, and the mini urn allows the devoted bereaved to bring a sampling home, too. Once your leftovers have been transferred into your cask of choice, your options for permanent housing at the Urgel complex are many. A plot in the "jardins" perhaps? A glass "niche" for your urn? Or maybe a "bronze niche" at the edge of the indoor fountain? For those with confidence in hermetic seals and more funds at their disposal, there also the option of harbouring your coffin in a crypt. The new wing of the complex is a mighty fancy structure. With a double storey wall-o-windows looking out onto the "park," the place is indeed "bathing... in light." Not only that, but it is also bathing in the bone-chilling tunes of nondescript "classical" music. I couldn't bring myself to ask my death "counsellor" whether they bother to leave the noise on afterhours for the benefit of the afterlifers. The idea of subjecting my post-mortem admirers to this pageantry seemed an unfair insult to those will have suffered enough. Let me invest in living luxury and let science claim my earthly remains.
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In the past three weeks, both Urgel Bourgie and Mount Royal Cemetery invited the general public to their facilities for "open houses" to learn about their post-mortem alternatives and the no-time-like-the-present attitude. They tell me that every day at Urgel Bourgie, Quebec's largest funeral home chain, is an open house: open 14 hours a day, seven days a week, the folks at the newly renovated Ville St-Laurent complex are pretty much always ready to plan your death.
My death-guru tour guide at Urgel was totally unabashed, my funeral-complex safari totally uncensored. He showed me the fridge where stiffs are stored sometimes for up to two weeks before relocating to a coffin. He showed me the ovens, complete with leftover cadaver ash. He offered me a cup of catered coffee and pointed out the lovely view. I took it all in without a hint of fear or loathing.