Preferences Regarding the Disposition of my Body, and Related Matters, upon my Death - Draft

[Edited February 27, minor fixes and an editorial note, in addition to this one.]

Disclaimers

By having specific preferences, and expressing the ideas or feelings that motivate them, I do not intend in any way to criticize differing preferences ideas, feelings, traditions or beliefs of others.  Yet, having said that, I recognize that I have a history of criticizing many of the practices, ideas and beliefs of those who have a similar cultural and religious history to mine, and this is likely as not to become evident here.

Before I get to my specific preferences, I acknowledge that there may be insurmountable practical barriers to carrying them out exactly as desired.  At this time, I do not know the condition in which my body may be found or recovered, or if it will be physically attainable at all.  It may be intact, or dismembered or mutilated in any number of ways and degrees of severity, and it may be in various stages of decay.  All of these may have some affect on how it is to be disposed, and in some possible cases, it may be in the interest of public health to ignore my preferences.  I acknowledge and accept all of this.  After all, I will be dead, and it is unlikely that it will make any difference to me, and it is very likely that there will be no "me".

Short, Confusing and Irrelevant Paragraph

This may be a good point at which to explain, if it is not already evident, that I am often of two or more contrary minds regarding any given matter.  This is particularly the case when it comes to intangibles, such as articles of faith.

Religious Background

As a person's specific relationship to matters of faith is an important guiding factor in planning and executing the disposal of remains, I shall try to explain myself in these matters as clearly as possible.

It's complicated.

I was raised until at least age 10 in the context of a very conservative rural Baptist church.  This was mostly a confusing and traumatic experience for me, yet my soft brain was indelibly imprinted with a genuine fear of God, and a deep sense of unworthiness.  This was compounded by being cursed with a mind just smart enough to foster doubt, and inevitable guilt over the same. As early as age 3, I would lie in bed and try to imagine God before the creation.  Where was he before there was anywhere to be?  If we are in his image in a literal sense, was God like a man "floating" in nothingness?  I tried to imagine eternity.  I tried to imagine how a universe, or a life, could have a beginning, but no end, or alternately end in eternal nothingness.  I could not simply stop myself from contemplating these absurd unsolvable questions.  I was, I am, equally terrified of mortality and immortality. At times I would literally beat my head against the headboard of my bed to try to break the spinning terror in my mind.  I did not sleep well.  As years passed, I considered my life to be a process of finding ways to distract myself from unthinkable existential terror.

After moving beyond the reach of that small town Baptist church, my parents became what I would call church-hoppers.  As if in search of a new faith that fit them, we would attend a different variety of protestant church nearly every week.  This was very educational, and also fostered a growing cynicism about the authority of churches and preachers.  The stranger-than-fiction anecdotes are many, but fortunately slowly sinking into the dark depths of my impaired memory.

I eventually decided that I was much too clever to believe in primitive religions, yet the fear and shame are still with me, although attenuated significantly by 4mg of Clonazepam (aka Klonoptin) a day.

As for religions other than variants of Christianity, I am honestly mostly ignorant, but curious.  From what little I have read, it seems that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have portions of their sacred texts in common, all worship essentially the same monotheistic God, and differ primarily on who their favorite Prophet or Savior is.  That hardly seems enough difference over which to be having centuries of war, but what do I know?  Hinduism, as seen from a distance, seems like a fascinating polytheistic acid trip. Buddhism seems the most benign, and the only one that doesn't have, as far as I know, the concept of a God.  Are there other major religions?  I can't think of any right now, but I'm sure there are many.

Enough preamble. On to some specifics:

Organ, Body, or Tissue Donation

I understand that it is unspeakably selfish of me to withhold a body I will no-longer inhabit from the re-use of organs, or donation in whole or in part to medical education or research.  Nonetheless, I am unspeakably selfish in this matter.   My only reasonable excuse for refusing organ donation is that I don't believe I have any organs that would be particularly preferable, or perhaps even usable. I was born broken in several known ways, and probably in other ways not identified, and I have not exactly worshiped at the temple of this body.  It has malfunctioned numerous times in numerous ways, and continues to do so.   My more unreasonable excuses have to do with some religious superstitions which have deep roots in my broken brain, mutated by my own psychoses, and cannot be fully weeded out.

Preparation and Burial of the Body

Important: while what I describe is essentially a "natural burial", please do not allow anyone to construe my meaning to be what is commonly called an "ecological burial", a process which involves a disintegration of the body far more thorough than cremation.  I do not wish to be frozen in nitrogen and shaken to bits.  Yes, I know it isn't really me, just my physical remains, but I'm just weird about this.  People, often are weird about stuff like this, each in their own way.

I would prefer to be prepared and buried by methods similar to what I have heard referred to as "natural burial", and I believe is also similar to other traditions.  I do not wish to be embalmed, nor even to have my blood removed.  I do not wish my organs to be removed.  I have no problem with temporary refrigeration or freezing of my remains until the most convenient time for preparation and burial.

I would prefer that my body, or recoverable portions thereof,  be stripped of clothing, cleaned, wrapped in some manner of biodegradable cloth, and placed in a biodegradable casket.  I would prefer a woven casket, preferably of willow, as I have had a love of willows throughout my life, but whatever material seems prudent will do.  I definitely do not want my casket placed in a buried vault, or surface mausoleum, but rather placed directly in the earth.  I do not mind the inevitability that the casket will be likely crushed in the course of re-filling the hole.  If my casket is to be on display for any kind of memorial service, but there is a risk of an unpleasant odor, any means which will not be damaging to the local ecosystem may be employed to mitigate the odor.  At this writing, I have done no research into such things.  Under no circumstances is there to be a public viewing of my remains.  My remains should only be seen by those who transport it to a place for preparation, those who are involved in preparing it for burial, and any forensic examiner if such is required.

I do not wish to be cremated, if it can be avoided.  I find the practical process of cremation to be horrifying, even though I wouldn't actually experience it.  But if it cannot be avoided, then at least I would prefer not to become a gruesome household decoration nobody really wants, but would rather join the silt of the Willamette river, if possible.  To be released somewhere beyond the bounds of the Earth would be ideal, but an expensive indulgence for a person who earned no such grandiose disposal in life and, as I seem to keep saying, is dead anyway.

Funeral, Wake, Whatever

Obviously, funerals, graveside services, and other such memorial gatherings, are to meet the needs of the living, as the dead have no more needs.  Nonetheless, I cannot resist a final posthumous opportunity to coerce people into hearing music that I love.  If there is to be an extended period of time during any gathering during which background music would be appropriate, I wish that music to be the album "A Blessing of Tears" by Robert Fripp, or really anything by Arvo Part.  Additionally, to open and close any formal ceremony, I wish for the song "Here Comes The Flood" by Peter Gabriel to serve as opening, not the overproduced bombastic version from his first album, but rather the simpler arrangements that can be found on Robert Fripp's album "Exposure" or Peter Gabriel's first best-of collection "16 Golden Greats" (terrible title).  For a closing song, the brief instrumental closing theme to Mystery Science Theater 3000, either in it's original form, or preferably, transcribed for and played on or recorded from a sizeable church organ.  I have a work in progress version of my own cover of "Here Comes The Flood", which, if finished before my death, may be preferable.  Similarly, I have not yet begun the process of transcribing and re-recording the closing theme to MST3K, but if that is completed before my death, it would be preferred.

I may or may not write my own elegy, as that seems to be the pinnacle of egotism and cruelty to anyone who might actually have cared about me.  I would inevitably write something glib and insensitive.

Location

Obviously, I need to be buried somewhere that allows the kind of "natural" burial I would prefer.  I have a fondness for Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland, but I'm not even on the waiting list yet, and I don't know if they allow the natural thing.  If it were all about me, I would like to be secretly and  illegally buried somewhere deep in a national forest, preferably in the coastal mountains of Oregon, but this isn't all about me, nor should I burden anyone with an obligation for lawbreaking and considerable inconvenience. Other than these, I have no strong preference, and the choice of location should be catered to the convenience of anyone living who may wish or feel obligated to visit the grave site.  If such is possible, a location where there is minimal or no grave site maintenance is appealing.  After a reasonable period of time to allow for natural decay, and the passing of those who knew me, I have no problem with the burial site becoming anonymous and re-used for any purpose.

Marker

I do allow myself the conceit of wanting a semi-durable marker, with the usual information, at my burial site.  Any natural material is acceptable, and something that will degrade over time is fine.  I am thinking of perhaps something made of baked clay, which should last as long as anyone has any interest, yet politely degrade into anonymity afterwards.  I have an absurd fondness for the idea of a Haniwa, a kind of traditional ancient Japanese terracotta grave marker, but more specifically, one which resembles the "Gyroids" that can be found in the various versions of Nintendo's "Animal Crossing".  I can provide images, and further, may actually make one myself sometime before I die.

The Longest and Most Unnecessary Paragraph

[Editorial Note 2017.02.27: I regret the judgemental and punitive statements I make below.  It is common for people to have comforting beliefs that are contrary to the theology to which they profess to adhere.  There is no real harm in this, so I should not be so critical, especially considering that I won't hear it, or if I do, the joke's on me.  My discomfort with this sort of theological dissonance is rooted in my own negative experiences with, and knowledge of, less benign contradictions.]

I do not want any preacher of any kind, unless in the interim I have truly befriended and specified one, using the event of my death as an opportunity to do their standard stump speech.  The only exception to this is if my wife, Patricia, who I fully expect to outlive me, insists on a traditional Catholic service, and even then I hope they can limit themselves to some kind of standard generic script.  I have been to a few different kinds of funerals and memorial services, and what I want to avoid is some stranger pretending to know anything about me, or any bullshit talk about "God's will" or fantasy talk about me "watching over" anyone after death, or worse, ignorant claims of me being an "angel" after death.  These things are commonly spoken by ignorant Christians who don't even know the founding documents of their religion.  I have no idea what happens to me after I die. I do know that by strict Christian orthodoxy as described in the Bible, my body will lie in the ground until the second coming of Christ, at which time it will be resurrected, and a bunch of other crazy shit happens, including a war between Heaven and Hell. What fun!  It's a long road to the pearly gates.  So between my death and the second coming, I won't be doing any looking down benevolently on anyone, nor will I be in Heaven hobnobbing with my dead relatives, which sounds more like Hell anyway. Also, according to Christian orthodoxy, nobody dies and becomes an angel, no matter what Clarence says in "It's A Wonderful Life".  Angels are terrifying powerful creatures who may superficially resemble humans but are an entirely different kind of being, as depicted in some of the better horror movies and the delightful Fox series Lucifer.  Again, I don't know if any of this is true. The logical fragment of my mind finds it all to be extremely unlikely, but my frightened little boy brain has been cruelly conditioned to believe it.  This is the real reason for objecting to cremation, and even modern embalming.  It just seems like saying to God, "You're so all-powerful, let's see if you can resurrect this bag of ashes and bone meal!"

What the Hell?  I'm dead, and never was an expert on anything, so let anyone say whatever shit they want. You can probably see now why I should not be writing my own elegy.

This first draft is more-or-less done, as I can't think of anything more to add, relevant or irrelevant. Once this is reviewed by an actual Funeral Director, it is bound to be significantly revised.

Dosages and Desperation

It has been long enough since the most recent Zoloft dosage increase to evaluate its efficacy.  There was at some point, very briefly, a barely perceptible improvement, and now I have begun to backslide. 

It is a little complex because different symptoms are taking different paths.  Part of what comes with my depression and/or anxiety is irritability and paranoia, basically taking everything that is said or done in the worst way and over-reacting.  Thankfully, this cluster of symptoms has consistently been disappearing over the course of my treatment with Zoloft.  As of now, bouts of reactionary jackassery are very infrequent, usually extremely brief, and I usually figure out what is going on (or more to the point not going on) and make amends in time to salvage what remains of the interaction.  As a result, my illness is perceived as improved by others because I am getting along better with others.  There is an internal component to this, of course.   I'm simply more philosophical about how I perceive, contemplate, and respond to stimuli.  I find it easier to put things in a perspective that make them smaller rather than bigger.

My internal life is not going as well as that.  Part of how I deescalate perceived negative stimuli is through a kind of fatalism, realizing that things will be as they are and I am powerless to change them, so why bother getting upset?  I also internalize a lot of perceived negative stimuli through a belief that I deserve it, that I brought it on myself, so once again, what point is there in reacting in a way that can only make it worse?   Finally, and most importantly, I realize that most of the negative stimuli that I perceive is simply manufactured in my own malfunctioning mind.

So while I am being less of an overt asshole, I am still being passively upsetting to others by simply not performing the few simple duties I have in life well, consistently, or in some cases, at all.   I do a lot of sleeping, or trying and failing to sleep, and other forms of doing nothing but letting time pass.

So, that is how I am doing, or not doing, in terms of my effect on the lives of others, but what about selfish me?   How am I doing?   Very not well is the short answer, and getting worse rapidly.

Shortly after starting Zoloft, I found myself able to resume in-person public interaction with old friends and acquaintances, and through those connections accumulated a few new associations.  I was meeting with a group of people at "Karaoke From Hell", a recurring show at Dante's, once or twice a month.  Singing has always been important to me, and I once again was able to convince myself that I could sing well enough at least to enjoy it, even if I couldn't perform as well as I believed had been able to about 10 years ago.

Abruptly, the last two monthly attempts started well enough, but I found myself feeling out-of-place, foolish, and painfully aware of my vocal shortcomings, well before the evening was over.  I went home both times feeling depressed and convinced that not only could I no longer sing well, but that the belief that I had once been a moderately good singer was a delusion.  I was also acutely aware of the age difference between myself and most of the other people present, and could not imagine that my presence could be as welcome as they pretended it to be.  They were being kind to a pitiful and foolish old man.

Most of my time since my life sort of collapsed, first in 2000, and further in 2003, has been spent on a myriad of pointless digital projects, mostly playing around with reworking other people's existing music and films.  Now I am finding that I am performing poorly at even these indulgent diversions.  It takes me longer and longer to make progress.  I context switch between projects too often, and don't document my process so I often am at a loss as to where I left off when I return to a project.  I do a lot of tossing out untold hours of work and starting over.  And remember, this is stuff I am doing purely for my own interest, contributing nothing to the lives of others.   Self-indulgent obsessions which rob time from my household duties.  I can't even live up to my own standards of goofing off.

My cognitive function seems very inconsistent and degrading.  A vague but heavy malaise drags me down and saps my energy.  I am overwhelmed with thoughts of many things I was sure I was going to do someday, many of which have been started and lay unfinished, will never be done.  I don't know how much time life has left for me, and everything I do is going slower and not well.  Even relatively trivial goals I now realize are beyond what is left of me.

I am rapidly approaching the state of mind I was in when I started Zoloft, a feeling best described with the single word "done".

I'm at 150mg  of  Zoloft.  The clinical limit is 200mg.  I'm trying to hold out and delay asking for that final increase for as long as possible because after that, there is literally nowhere to go.  If it doesn't work, or if it works and then gradually starts failing, I have nowhere else to go.  True hopelessness.  As for anxiety, a lot of old symptoms are coming back, but I am not quite in the hell hole I was in before I started Clonazepam.  But I know I will be back there at some point, I feel myself descending towards it, and there is nowhere to go there.  The 4mg daily dosage I am on already would be considered by many clinicians to be absurdly high.

Before I once again declare myself "done"of my own volition, it seems likely that life and medicine will have decided for me.  I'm sorry to be so absorbed in self pity in a world full of people enduring real suffering beyond my imagining.  I have cheated death so many times in so many ways, but it seems that the world, evolution, the universe and God all agree that I was not meant to live.  If I had been born very few years earlier, many of the medications and surgeries that have saved my life would not have existed.  Television and other media are filled with heartwarming and inspiring stories of people living meaningful, purposeful lives bravely overcoming illnesses and injuries far worse that my poorly wired brain and poorly plumbed circulatory system.  There will never be such a story about me because I am a selfish, self-pitying, self-loathing weakling who will continue whining and complaining until my bitter end.

The mix is better for now

My previous post was too early in the process of dosage increase.  I also complicated matters by being impatient and going from the intermediate dose of 125 to the new dose of 150 after only 5 days.

Again not any sort of manic happiness, just a more balanced perspective behind how I feel about things.  I am once again fairly consistently capable of gratitude, yet not completely crushed by shame over having been an ungrateful ass.  The process of making amends where I feel it is needed is often difficult because I have conditioned people to take a defensive and suspicious stance when interacting with me.

My biggest concern is that once again my condition will degrade over the course of very few months, and another 50mg increase puts me at the maximum of 200, and if that doesn't work or last, there is nowhere to go but things like ECT.

Mixed Results

Maybe it is too early to know.

As previously mentioned, I was perceiving a decrease in the efficacy of Zoloft at 100 mg/day.
I wasn't feeling nearly as "done" as before I started, but also not nearly as "glass half full" as I did some time after the increase to 100.

I'm not sure how long it took for the 100 to become fully effective.
I'm not sure how long it lasted before it began to decline.
I am very short on basic data.

After seeing my Psychiatrist, I ramped up to 150, and have been there for nearly a week.
There were a few brief episodes of what I might call "micro-mania", but is really what I believe should be my "normal", spontaneous and often extemporaneous singing during routine activities like driving, and a tendency to make the occasional bad joke or pun.
But those episodes are few and far between, and there may be no more forthcoming.
More importantly, the generalized "glass half full" attitude never came back.
In fact, my glass seems as broken and bloody as it was before the increase.
Maybe, just maybe, a little worse, but not with sufficient drama for certainty.

In the absence of significant external stimuli, my default mode seems that of an empty automaton, slogging through the tasks of existence with neither joy nor despair, thinking, apparently, about nothing most of the time.

My cognition seems to be impaired, and I don't just mean my usual memory problems, both short and long term.  I find myself making absurdly stupid mistakes with increasing frequency.  Things like waiting for a stop sign to change.  I am more easily confused if there is too much incoherent external stimuli, such as more than one person talking at once, or even one person talking while I am attempting to engage in a simple task.  All of these have been general low-grade problems for a long time, but they have become noticeably worse since the increase.

All of this feeds my already ample sense of worthlessness.

Other words and phrases are stumbling around in my head, but they refuse to line up in an orderly fashion and make useful sentences.  Useful.  I find the word almost funny enough right now to make me laugh, but not quite.

Is it possible that writing is not good for me?  Obviously, I am not a particularly good writer, but that isn't the concern I am trying to express.  Writing requires the exhausting effort of translating my chaotic and fragmentary thoughts into English sentences.  It forces me to try to think.  The more I think, the more I examine my own psyche, the more I hate myself.  The hate is twofold, first because thinking is hard and I am stupid, and second because what little I can put together out of what is inside me is boring and ugly.

OK, enough of that for now.  Time to take pills that make me sleep.

Too Much Introspection Makes Blah Blah Blah

As always, let's start with "I", the prison in which I live.

I didn't intend it, but this evening somehow I ended up re-reading a bunch of my Facebook "Notes", a minority of which have been re-published here as Blog entries.

It is a rabbit hole down which I have a history of falling, but have avoided for some time now.  I remember my own writing poorly enough to find it interesting to re-read, and will spend an absurd amount of time re-experiencing myself, and as noted previously, usually myself at my worst.

I actually think that some kind of compilation of portions of my incessant whining might make an oddly interesting book, and as such the only work product of my entire life.

This returns me to that dangerous feeling of being "done".  That feeling that led me to Zoloft, which provided some diversion for what seems like a remarkably short time.  I can't think of anything to add, and I can find much that is redundant.  I had started going to Karaoke From Hell again, something that is strangely important to me.  I had even been embraced by a whole new semi-organized group of regulars that had developed in my years of absence.  But then came the night that, a few hours in, I started to feel empty, foolish, self-conscious and out-of-place.  I started to notice how poorly I sing, despite the charitable compliments.

I had been very steady for a little while on my Zoloft/Clonazepam combo, but now I feel an intolerable urgency for this feeling of meaningless emptiness to just stop.  Fortunately, I have a very strong sense of, for lack of a better word, duty.  There are things that need to be done, and I have to do them.  There are people, very few but very important to me, who would be hurt, and I have to wait until I am sure they would be truly better off without me.  This does nothing to calm me down, or alleviate my suffering, but it keeps me back from the edge.

Clearly, it is time for another appointment with my psychologist.

If anyone actually reads this, please don't panic.  I'm all talk, all the time.

A Post of Uncertain Motivation

Mostly, I think I just remembered that I had a blog, and noticed that I had not written in it in a long time.   My best guess is that I only feel bloggy when I am depressed or otherwise distressed, and have this inexplicable urge to share the worst of me and my experience with my pantheon of imaginary friends.

So, am I depressed?  Sometimes, and with increasing frequency, as best as I can judge as the thing inside the black box of my mind.  I am approaching the point of considering modifications to my treatment, but I do so with much trepidation.  I don't have a lot of overhead for dosage increase of Zoloft, and it seems awfully soon to go up from 100mg/day, when the absolute ceiling allowed is 200mg/day. 

Hopefully, my psychiatrist kept notes on my effects and side-effects of the other medications I had tried and abandoned, as some may be worth re-visiting.  Considering that some of the side-effects that had led to cessation of some medications have become permanent conditions of uncertain cause.  I have so many things wrong with me, and I take so many medications, not just psychoactive ones, the cause of my "side-effects" would be a very difficult and hazardous thing to sort out.

Hey look, I just ran out of motivation to ramble into the void.

A Gratitude Experiment

It took me a long time to arrive at the title for this experiment.  I started with "Optimism" but that didn't feel right.  I had noticed that when I write, even when I start out with intentions of reporting positive outcomes, I have a habit of making sure I thoroughly cover all of the negatives as well.  The idea here is to write something in which I focus on the good over the bad of my experiences and feelings.  I searched my psyche for positive adjectives I could apply to myself that didn't instantly inspire a sarcastic counterpoint, and I finally settled on "grateful".  I can honestly say that there are a great many things in life for which I am grateful, but don't worry, this isn't turning into some kind of sappy list of puppies and sunsets.

This is part of a continuing series reporting to myself about the efficacy of pharmaceutical interventions of my various psychological and/or neurological defects.

After extensive trials over the course of years, the following medications have a net positive effect on my behavior and feelings:

Clonazepam (AKA Klonopin), a benzodiazepine class of tranquilizer
1mg every 6 hours.
This has been very effective in preventing a number of the worst of my traditional panic symptoms, as well as preventing a difficult to describe sort of obsessive circular thinking about unsolvable existential dilemmas, which had begun back when I was 3 years old (not kidding).

Atenolol, a Beta Blocker
25mg twice a day, six hours apart
While not technically a psychiatric medication, in addition to its application to hypertension,  it suppresses the physical symptoms of panic attacks (increased heart rate, shortness of breath), and I believe it breaks a feedback loop that causes panic attacks to escalate.  Without it, I often experienced subjectively realistic, yet false, symptoms of cardiac distress.

Sertraline (AKA Zoloft), an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor)
100mg per day
This was the gold at the end of the rainbow for me.  When I began Zoloft a few months ago, it had been literally years since I had last tried an SSRI.  All previous trials with other drugs produced dramatic negative effects, both in terms of known possible side effects, and zero or inverse results for the intended primary effect.  It isn't a "happy pill", but it is a surprisingly effective at making me feel significantly less terrible.  I suspect this medication is what allows me to write this "Gratitude Experiment".    Here's an unexpected and welcome side-effect: I am slowly but steadily losing weight since starting Sertraline, and I have no idea how or why.  I could make some guesses, but I am pretty much unaware of the changes in my behavior that have led to this weight loss.  I think I've been on it for a little more than two months, and I have lost 25lbs.  Not to worry, I could lose another 25 and still be overweight.

So, those are the drugs for which I am grateful in terms of my psychological well being.  For my purely physical conditions, there is a whole other list which I can't even remember off the top of my head, but I'm grateful for those as well.

I must emphasize strongly, as I have before, that I am not advocating the use of any of these specific substances.  Every person is different, and responds differently to the same substances.  If you don't feel overwhelmed by or hopeless about your life, you probably don't need any of these, or anything like them.  If you would benefit from pharmaceutical intervention, that must be a cautious process undertaken at the direction of a qualified psychiatrist.

This satisfies the primary intent for this post.  The lack of a list of the many people and things for which I am grateful should not be interpreted as a lack of appreciation for the same.

Ungrateful and ungracious complaints aplenty in future posts, I promise!