Pink Houses & the Embalming King | 4M #121

Welcome to the hundred-and-twenty-first edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #121, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

After death do us part

A woman recently wrote to the author of The Washington Post advice column “Ask Amy” with a “grave question.” It seems although her husband of 25 years has lived on the West Coast his entire life, he now wants to be buried in his ancestral state of Kansas. Trouble is, there’s only one plot available in the family cemetery — and his wife doesn’t want to be buried in a state where she’s never lived. Amy’s advice? Give him time, encourage him to honor the Kansas community in some other way, and buy herself a plot in her own hometown. 

Rest in luxury

Speaking of burial plots, they’re getting pretty fancy — and expensive — in Egypt. Like the pharaohs and their pyramids before them, modern Egyptians are now planning to rest eternally in “luxurious rest houses equipped with attractive equipment, ceramic floors, walls of pink stone and granite, marble stairs, Islamic-style decorations, iron gates, private security and small gardens.” Real estate companies are advertising these properties on social media for prices ranging from one to two million Egyptian pounds (about $33k to $65k).

They brought all the puns

The deathcare community knows that several cemeteries are becoming multi-use venues, so the fact that a saxophonist is playing concerts in New York’s Green-Wood and Chicago’s Bohemian National isn’t a surprise. It’s still fun, though, to see how others react. When announcing Colin Stetson’s tour dates, this outlet went with puns: “Giving a whole new meaning to ‘graveyard shift,’ Colin Stetson is counting cemeteries among the venues he’ll visit on some upcoming 2024 North American live dates. Unusual venues aside, we’re dead serious in saying these are performances you won’t want buried on your schedule. We imagine there are few environments better than cemeteries for one to experience the artist’s ‘soul-dredging drones’ in.”

Grandpa Nepfumbada’s tomatoes

Two Arizona lawmakers recently introduced legislation that would make their state the eighth to allow natural organic reduction (NOR). Officially, the bill is called HB 2081, but apparently some have dubbed it the “Grandpa in the Garden” bill, because it would allow remains to be “turned into fertile soil that can be used in a family member’s garden or backyard.” AZ Central sought residents’ views on the process, and while most were favorable, at least one person was a little leary: “It just doesn’t seem right, doesn’t feel right, actually,” Trayton Nepfumbada said. “I wouldn’t want to go into the backyard and say, ‘Look at grandpa, he just made a bunch of tomatoes for us.’”

More horrible Hallford texts

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, more details about Colorado’s Return to Nature owners Jon and Carie Hallford’s knowledge of the situation are emerging. Last week prosecutors revealed more text messages between the two, including this horrid and despicable entry from 2020: “Options: A, build a new machine ASAP. B, dig a big hole and use lye. Where? C, dig a small hole and build a large fire. Where? D, I go to prison, which is probably going to happen,” and this even worse one from last year: “I want to take a shower as soon as I get back because while I was making the transfer, I got people juice on me. Want the double cheeseburger, lettuce, wrapped with everything minus tomatoes, please.”

Who knew?

Not sure why or how people are still coming forward with “never before heard” gossip about Elvis Presley … but here they are. Now two of The King’s bodyguards are sharing details about how his “fascination” with “death and embalming” put them in “situations that made them “nervous and nauseous.” They cited times when Elvis watched a mortician embalm a friend, took them (and his girlfriends, including future wife Priscilla) to the morgue after hours using “his fame” as his “passkey,” and spoke about embalming using terms that “would impress a doctor.” Supposedly, says Showbiz Cheat Sheet, “Elvis believed these trips were a good reminder that life is temporary.”