Laughing at Death

As the hearse glides up to a stoplight, three kids about 12 years old start jumping up and down on the corner. They point, wave, and laugh hysterically. One of the kids steps off the curb and plants his face on the rear window. He sees me. I am lying on my back in an open coffin, propped up on a big fluffy pillow. I turn my head to the boy and salute him. He throws his hands in the air and shrieks with delight.

This is no dream, nor my nightmare. I am riding in the back of a flamingo-pink hearse, laid out in a pink coffin, both the property of the Dying-to-Get-In company. From my corpse's-eye-view of downtown Port Washington, N.Y., I watch as we elicit stares and honks and literally stop traffic behind us. The theory behind the company, launched last February, is that I'm learning to laugh in the face of death, but so far the spectacle we've created is teaching me more about handling others laughing at me.

Dying-to-Get-In is the brainchild of Gerri Guadagno and Gayle Stimler. In addition to offering hearse rides for all occasions, from retirement parties and proms to airport pick-ups and "even funerals," Gerri and Gayle create customized funeral urns and conduct YOU-logy workshops--self-discovery seminars where participants learn, among other things, how to draft their own eulogies. The two also arrange fun-filled cemetery tours and offer unique ways of dispersing your loved one's ashes, including the "Up, Up and Away" (send a "smattering of ashes" skyward, their website offers, with a cluster of personalized helium balloons) and the "Surf & Turf Combo" ("scatter at sea and save some for land").

On Gerri's business card is inscribed: "Faux Funeral Cortege: Experience It AND Live to Talk About It!" Gerri and Gayle, both in their 40s, met at a women's support group in 1992. They say whatever comes across their minds and laugh easily. What made them start Dying-to-Get-In is a simple belief that the key to enjoying life is to adopt an irreverent attitude toward death.

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