Last month my grandfather passed away. He asked to be cremated and his ashes spread across the Bayonne Bay in New Jersey, where he would watch ships and take pictures of them. My father even sent me home several roles of his pictures, all of ships and various things in the park he loved.

My grandfather was a real photographer. Not like me. I have a digital camera embedded with cutting edge technology able to bring things like 8x zoom, macro photography, even authofocus and white balance down to a point and click science. My grandfather owned boxes upon boxes of camera equipment all types of SLR's from decades before I was even born. All with manual controls, back when it took real skill to take a picture of a flower or a bird.

Grandpa Joe was a recluse genius who loved his books, literature, photography, and served in World War II.

Yet when he died, my grandmother requested no funeral and no urn. She had the ashes shipped via FedEx to her son's house, our house, in Kansas City. My grandmother can't be blamed, she was dilerious on pain medications, and my grandfather was probably delirious from Alzheimers when he wrote his living will anyway.

I always said I wanted to be cremated when I died because when you're buried, they put your coffin in a concrete vault so it won't sink. The dirt doesn't really touch you and the worms don't get a taste of you. Your body rots in cold solitude, away from the nature from wence it came. This idea, it just seems to me like dishonour of burial rites somehow. Truly this must be what they mean when they say 'defile a corpse'.

When I thought about my grandfather's plight, I thought, where do I want my ashes? And the answer seemed so clear. I want my ashes to be put inside a shoebox and to be buried alongside my pets-- my grave marked by three bricks. I decided that would be the ultimate honour for me. And though others my find it weird, depressing, or maybe even gross. Those who know me on the deepest levels would probably understand, such a thing would have made me most happy.

and now you know the story, behind buried in a shoebox.