Blog Glob: "Microchip tombstones latest boomer gadget"

Excerpt:

Already, forward-looking Canadians are writing their own epitaphs, filming their own memorial biopics and picking their own caskets — ultimately micromanaging their demise the same way they do their lives. As such, industry observers predict the notion of funerals as something for surviving friends and family will soon be upended, with boomers ensuring they get the final word even in death.

"There used to be this very staid ceremony that we were all married to. And a lot of people in the younger generations — and certainly the baby boomers — are saying: 'To heck with that! I've had a really interesting life and want people to know about it,'" says Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, author of Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death. "Directing, essentially, your own funeral can bring a sense of closure and of a life well lived."

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"That's totally seductive, the idea that some future race in space suits will be downloading your specs . . . It provides a fantasy of permanence (and) of a kind of secular afterlife," says Jokinen, who lives in Ottawa. "(But) we have to accept that when we die, we have moved on and the world evolves without us."

Click to read the rest of "Microchip tombstones latest boomer gadget" (National Post).