Until death do us part

Until death do us part and beyond. From CNN:

When Xavier Bowie died in a flooded New Orleans neighborhood, his wife did the best she could in a city so preoccupied with saving the living that no one can deal with the dead. She wrapped his body in a sheet, laid him on a makeshift bier of plywood boards, with a little help, and floated him down to the main road. For more than an hour, Evelyn Turner waited along Rampart Street outside the French Quarter, her husband's body resting on the grassy median as car after car passed, their wakes threatening to wash over the corpse. "This is ridiculous," Turner, 54, said as she sobbed into a dirty washcloth. Bowie, 57, a truck driver who had been with Turner for 16 years, had advanced lung cancer and could not be easily moved. When Turner could find no one to take them out of the city, she decided to stay home and hoped the storm would spare them. snip With hundreds, if not thousands, of residents still stuck on roofs and in attics across the city, officials have concentrated on saving survivors of Katrina and floodwaters. "We're not even dealing with dead bodies," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday. When Turner got back to the corpse, she collapsed onto the plywood sheets and wept.

Heartbreaking. For the record, should I ever die in such circumstances, my wife and children should leave my body to the elements. Also, if I'm in a vegetative state, my family has my authorization to disconnect me from any tubes preventing me from dying a natural death. I want that on the record so that I never cause a real national crisis that requires prompt action from our Dear Leader and Congress. UPDATE. Georgia10, an occasional commenter here, also blogged on this and hers is a classic must read.