J Henry Stuhr

it’s been quite some time since my review of stuhr’s was deleted, but another one of my reviews was recently deleted, and i guess it awakened the beast. actually, that love letter’s been sitting in my email for a while now. btw, juliana, take down the rest of that silly shit you wrote. we haven’t deleted it all yet, and we’re a successful highfalutin website now — people Care.
i wonder what precisely bothers Unilocal,and then i realize it’s simply an advertising tool, so it’s silly of me to attempt anything of substance (in fact, that’s probably the reason i attempted it in the first place: it’s fucking silly), not to mention take anything personally. i didn’t realize, back when i was lured onto this site so many years ago, that no one wants you to think outside the box on a review site. i was just trying to entertain a friend. actually, i thought if i bothered to write anything at all, even if it were only some prosaic review, it Should be interesting. after all, why would anyone want to read the same review 42 other people have already written? my review was deleted for not being «primarily relevant to a consumer experience,» which, since we’re talking about a funeral home, is very, very… strange.
it takes a lot to bury someone (and stuhr’s provides a wonderful support system): psychically, emotionally, even materially — the literal $$ it takes to die is strange — i was struck by it, hence the review. it is bizarre the rituals that we go through in this country to lay someone to rest. can’t a reviewer ask why?
when i wrote my review, i had recently discovered that my grandfather was making his own funeral plans at that venerable institution. wrapping one’s head around this fact is bizarre. morbid? yes. responsible? absofuckinlutely. still, completely strange. on top of that, i had just attended a funeral here; however — here’s that word again — i’m not having a «consumer» experience, according to Unilocal.wtf does that mean? if the details of my grandfather’s planning his own funeral at stuhr’s and having attended several funerals at stuhr’s isn’t a «consumer experience,» what is?
in fact, what’s wrong with us that in our weird culture we only count as consumers? isn’t consumerism another kind of death, after all? i thought that that was what i was getting at in my review in the first place. there’s something very strange about a culture that only involves $, and the fact that no one acknowledges it or is even allowed to acknowledge it is even stranger — at least not on a review site dedicated to consumerism. too meta. hence the reason i wrote this review at all.
guess it’s time to get back to Unilocal so i can find more goods that i need — even when i die! can’t talk.
peace out.
(spring, 2007)
stuhr’s is where the rich go to die. of course, how can anyone but the rich afford to die these days? apparently a lot of money has to be involved just to put us in the ground. my grandfather’s already had several appointments with the stuhr’s people, just to line things up. the man’s in perfect health, by the way, but he won’t let that stop him. i guess some people even die responsibly.
i’ve only been to three wakes here, and every time it was really awkward and painfully sober. i felt like the refrigerated flowers: stale and without fragrance. this concept is anathema to me, maybe because i’ve been to an irish wake, so i know what i’m missing. a wake should last a minimum of two days and at least a half dozen cases of alcohol, not to mention a hundred good stories, and the body is at home, not in some fake, sterilized «funeral home,» which, by the way, is a really disturbing name and much more disturbing concept. just because we’ve designated certain «homes» for death doesn’t mean we can get away from it. personally, just cremate me and be done with it. throw my remains in the ocean, plant a tree, donate my organs, do something positive, but don’t pretend my body will last forever. graveyards have nothing to do with the dead — they’re our own morbid creations. after all, we’re the ones haunted by ghosts. hell, some of us are ghosts already. maybe it can best be described by the hearse: ours have black curtains that hide the coffin, while an irish hearse has no curtains, just lots of glass, with the coffin on display (surrounded by flowers). at least they can stand to look at death. maybe that’s why it’s so expensive to die. ($$$=please go away.) but doesn’t it seem pointless to waste money on yourself when you can no longer enjoy it? what’s the point of taking a status symbol to the grave? why do we try to impress people even in death? the worms are unimpressed. death is hard enough without having to care what people think. the whole thing bothers me. it just seems like charging the bereaved an arm and a leg is the worst crime, and not celebrating someone’s life is even worse. i don’t know. i like to think we’re just going to kansas city, as the man said.