If you happen to die in North America, this is probably what will happen next: Someone will pause for a moment in front of your corpse and then make a phone call. They’ll call either a funeral home or a local government agency, depending on how much money you have. Some minutes later—I’ve never timed the interval, but in my experience it’s always at the crossroads of too soon and eternity—two people will show up in suits to take your body away. They will briskly shake hands with the living and say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” in a tone that indicates they’d like to be sorry for your loss, but this is what they do for work. To preserve a semblance of dignity, they might invite the living to step out of the room while they begin the awkward business of wrangling your body onto a board, strapping it down, and getting you out of there as quickly as possible…
