It’s a rare and special day (or in this case week) when I can’t find words to adequately describe something, but the extraordinary creepiness of huggable (cremain) urns is just one of those products that stops me short. (Thanks for the link go to Matt, although I’m not sure “thanks” is the right word…)

If it was a pet-specific product, I’d just shudder and move on, but if you actually visit the site and look at children clutching the alleged cremains of their dead siblings, the yuck factor just goes right through the roof. I actually emailed a contact in the funerary industry (because I do, in fact, have one of the weirdest rolodexes ever) and they confirmed that this is an actual product. Whether the testimonials are real, I have no idea. Nor, I think, do I want to know. Ewww. I know one person does not a good sample make, but, really, would you spend a lot of time devoted to thinking about this? I didn’t think so.

I find these things so disturbing that I left this post in the draft file for days because I just kept thinking I’d find words to describe the yuckiness, but, well, there just aren’t enough of them.

(Two more days later)…I realized I still hadn’t posted this, but in the meantime I’ve spent (wasted) more time contemplating these things. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that it must be a Southern company, because if you think about it it’s a pretty Southern product.

And as creepy as those testimonials are, when you get right down to it, is this product any tackier than the dolphin urn from Costco, which they helpfully explain can be used for either cremains or other keepsake items?

In a Southern household, that elderly relative everyone has who’s been announcing she’s on death’s door for approximately, oh, her entire life, would use this bad boy as a candy dish. She’d wait until you took one of the A and W rootbeer flavored hard candies she’d offered from the dish, then she’d tell you that someday said dish was going to house her earthly remains. And that could just be any day now. Not that I know anyone like that.

But I digress.

I was kind of surprised to find the company is located in California rather than, say, Georgia or Florida, but I guess you can insert your own California-themed joke here. I know that California is known for it’s wackiness, but I doubt very much it can hold a candle to the South in terms of death-obsessiveness.

The truly excellent Southern columnist Celia Rivenark had an essay titled “Where Were You When Stringbean Passed? A real Southerner would know the answer to that question” that began:

Southerners are preoccupied with death. As far back as I can remember, new of the recently dead was the number-one topic at any get-together. I have friends who can spend a solid forty-five minutes eulogizing a fifth cousin twice removed (don’t ask me removed from what) without coming up for air.

(This appeared in “We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier” – a truly hilarious collection of essays. I hear that “Bless Your Heart, Tramp”, her first book, is equally funny. Oh, and Stringbean was a character on Heehaw, or so I’m told).

These thoughts really are somewhat tenuously connected, as Matt and I are no doubt (some degree of) cousins (some degree) removed, although his brother and I never did get around to sitting down and figuring it out. And that, in itself, is very Southern.