The Bureaucracy of Dying

Fathers’ Day this year has a hollow resonance, but it’s not because of the commercialism or the tackiness of many of those "Gifts for Dad" ads. This is personal. A week ago, on a bright and su nny morning, my father took a mid-morning nap and did not wake up again. He had not been well for a while; nothing specific in terms of illness, just the general malaise of old age. It was, everyone said, a good way to die–a peaceful, painless way to leave this life.

I have not had the time to ponder the philosophies of this, nor to mourn really, for I have been caught up in the complex and complicated business of dying. Even in death–as in taxes, I suppose–bureaucracy and red tape rear their ugly heads.

At eleven o’clock that evening, I found myself spreading out 12 copies of the death certificate application before the clerks at the mortuary. I had botched up the first set because, not having a typewriter or a computer at home, I had hand-written the answers–in as neat and legible a print as I could manage–on all four copies. Too late did I learn that you are supposed to write on only one copy and type on the other three. My good doctor botched up his part too, filling in only the primary cause of death and not the antecedent and underlying causes. If I had known what to write I would have filled the answers in myself–my writing is bad enough to pass for a doctor’s–instead of knocking on his door so late at night. But since I had to do the whole thing over, I decided to be segurista and did two sets of four copies–which is how I ended up with a full deck of a dozen copies for the bureaucracy to choose from.

That wasn’t the end of my paper chase though. Next came the business of burying the ashes. I thought it was a simple enough business opening up an already constructed niche (ossuary crypt is the proper term) but, amid a formidable shuffle of forms of all colors and sizes, I was told by the cemetery manager that it now takes 22 pieces of paper before a burial–of whatever sort–can take place. Cemeteries, he wearily informed me, now have to be ISO certified, hence the additional paperwork, up from the previous ten forms. Well, I guess it’s some comfort knowing that my parents’ remains are buried in an environment-friendly location.