THINGS TO DO FOR GRANDMA WHEN SHE’S DEAD: In the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, which you can enter for a modest fee; I don’t remember how modest the fee was, only that she was modesty personified, a jewel of modesty and Christian virtue, whereas I can remember every detail of her very immodest sister, including the shots afterwards; you can see the cream of Palermitano society hanging on the walls. I do not know why 18th and 19th century Sicilian swells thought that being stuffed and mounted in a church basement was such a good idea, but they did, and who are we, the enthusiasts of the Hula-Hoop, the Pet Rock, and Pamela Anderson to point the finger of absurdity at anyone?

The catacombs form a natural refrigerator of sorts and the galleries feature separate areas for priests, nuns, including the mortal remains of one mother superior hanging from the ceiling doing her impression of the Flying Nun, and one archbishop in full episcopal regalia, with scintillating hints of Congregationalism around the pockets, looking as though someone put him together from cigarette ashes and Elmer’s Glue. There were several galleries of the rich and locally famous, the upper crust in their Sunday best, all of them moldering away along with their social pretensions. Here you have the society swain of 1830 hanging across the way from the rich girl he got in trouble in back in the early summer of 1829. The girl’s parents hang next to her, as if to make sure there’ll be no more of this monkey business here, thank you very much, and the swain hangs between the girl’s two brothers, whose heads are turned slightly towards their sister’s seducer and whose skeletal grins seem to say, “What? Twenty- seven stab wounds weren’t enough? You want more?” And so there they are, the rich in their full if more than slightly moldy glory, awaiting the Resurrection so they can get a change of clothes. Nowhere in the lot is there a poor person, nowhere in the lot is there someone having any connection with the advertising business. Life and death were both unfair in those days. Hanging on the wall after you died just wasn’t good enough for the poor and outcast way back then, although just hanging by the neck until you were dead was.

Nowadays, of course, we live in a much more democratic world and the poor may choose to be interred where they will, and today the same freeze dry technology gives you a great cup of coffee every morning is now available to stiffs, living and dead, of every income level. Why go through the trauma of a wake and funeral when it is possible to have Grandma freeze dried and left in her favorite chair in the corner? Why try to explain the concept of death to your children when you can keep Grandma as part of the family forever? Freeze drying lets you keep those near and dear to you exactly where they were the last time you saw them. You can even buy special attachments for your vacuum cleaner that will let you clean Grandma off before the neighbors notice she’s getting a bit dusty for her age. There’s even a line of clothes for the hip but deceased Grandma so she will never feel out of it, and no, I don’t know how they’ll get those clothes on her, but where there’s a will and you’re in it, there’s always a way.