Payam Saberi’s Funeral

The first meeting with the funeral director takes for ever, ticking off the first 100 of those 1,000 decisions. Where do you want the service, what time should it be, how many cars, cremation or burial, pine or oak, chrome handles or gold-painted ones, live music or taped, will anyone be visiting the body, do you want the corpse to have makeup, etc etc and then etc and etc – and you have to make up the answers on the spot, as though you had an opinion.