Pondering a good buy for Long Goodbye

As a rapidly declining baby boomer put off by what he sees in the mirror, I should be spending a lot more time pondering my death and burial. Not to the point of cutting into my TV time, but, you know, perhaps during those late-night walks when the moon lights my way and it’s so peaceful you can hear the crickets chirping.

In short, the perfect time to decide whether you want to be planted or incinerated.

I honestly don’t have a preference, but sincerely hope the final decision isn’t as complicated as whether to buy an LCD or plasma big-screen TV. I’ve been mulling that one for more than a year now and still don’t know which way to go. LCD does better at high resolution, but plasma tends to offer better color contrast.

Underground burial requires a potentially expensive casket, while cremation can be handled with a shoebox and a rowboat, if one chooses an oceanic resting place. Yet, a burial gives loved ones somewhere to go to commune with the departed, while cremation seems to make that much less satisfying.

That sounds like a formula for making an ill-advised eleventh-hour decision.

Perhaps you’re asking, “Hey, Bunky, what’s up with the death talk?”

I’ll tell you what’s up. One of my colleagues wrote a story last week about a national trend among Catholics toward above-ground burial. Orange County Catholics are following along and, according to the story, planning at least six granite mausoleums for their three local cemeteries.

Then, as if that weren’t troubling enough, Rolling Stones guitarist and songwriter Keith Richards was quoted in a British newspaper as saying he once mixed his father’s cremated ashes with some cocaine and “snorted my father.”

Perhaps not liking how that sounded in print, Richards quickly retracted it and said he was only joking. I’m going to go with Keith on this one.

What a cutup that guy is.

But these Catholics aren’t joking. Eight days ago, the Orange County diocese dedicated a 4,000-space crypt center at Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest. The president of the mausoleum company that built the crypts told reporter Roy Rivenburg that the aboveground resting places can handle 10,000 people per acre, 10 times the number of graves with underground burial.

I wasn’t raised Catholic, but I like the way they’re thinking. To tell the truth, I am not crazy about being left below the sod. Cemeteries are not my favorite places. I frequently drive by one of Orange County’s larger ones and think it would make a nice par-3 layout.

Cremation? Uh, not crazy about that, either. Seems a bit violent for such a sweet guy.

Of course, there is the cryogenically frozen option, popularized by baseball great Ted Williams and Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. I left Nebraska years ago to escape the cold.

So, here we go again with having to make a decision. Just like with the TV, I’d hate to pull the trigger on a burial plan and then regret it.

How do people decide these things? I’m not crazy about the damp underground, nor in love with fire. But do I really rate an aboveground mausoleum? Don’t you have to be from a ruling family?

Seems kind of showy for just one lonely guy. I don’t want to draw attention to myself.

This probably borders on heresy, but I wouldn’t mind if my relatives decided. My mom and sisters don’t hesitate to offer decorating tips for my apartment, so why not let them go all the way?

I assumed morticians might get plenty of relatives who don’t know how their recently deceased loved ones want to be buried. Perhaps relatives of people like me, who go quickly and just hadn’t gotten around to thinking post-mortem.

Shows what I know. “Maybe once every month, maybe not even that much,” says Cheri Dixon, office manager at Renaker-Klockgether Mortuary in Buena Park. To the contrary, she says, most people plan well in advance, some as far back as 20 years before the expiration date.

“I could send you our price list,” she says.

As always, much thinking to do, but first things first. The big-screen TV, then eternal resting place.

Thoughts are forming already: don’t want to be planted, don’t want to be cremated.

And definitely not snorted.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns:

www.latimes.com/parsons