Some years ago a girlfriend asked me to accompany her to visit her dead relative in a cemetery. Since this was vastly preferable to accompanying her to visit her live relatives in Pretoria, I went along.I still don't remember how we reached the cemetery or where it was. I just remember roads no one had ever driven down and vibracrete walls and an undergrowth littered with Smirnoff Spin and sun-bleached racing pages from the Sunday Times. Tombstones were fallen or sunken or broken. I wasn't sure which depressed me more: the graves that had obviously never been visited or those with ancient bouquets of withered chrysanthemums. We saw a snake.Ever since that day I've had a deep aversion to being buried. I'm neither religious nor spiritual, whatever that lame distinction might be, and I don't believe that any part of us lives on after death other than as a memory in specific minds or in the dwindling percussive wave made by the rippling-out consequences of our actions. Still, I have eno...
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