If you wished to keep good company and be buried within proximity of author Ayn Rand at the Kensico Cemetery in New York, it could cost you up to US$500,000 — about R6.5m at today’s exchange rate. And, if you were toying with the idea of being cryonically frozen (that’s being frozen for perpetuity when dead — not been cryogenically frozen to be brought back to life, à la Austin Powers), that could set you back over $300,000 and your body would have to make its way to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona. Here in SA, it costs a lot less to make a statement about your departure to eternity with an outrageously flashy tombstone. When legendary actor Joe Mafela died last month, the nation mourned. And Bataung Memorial Headstones built the man who immortalised the words, "it’s good, good, good, it’s good, it’s nice" for takeaway brand Chicken Licken, the mother of all tombstones. Situated in one of the fancier corners of Jo’burg’s state-owned Westpark Cemetery, the gargantuan m...
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