This started out purely as a funny post. Browsing through my pile of magazines recently, I came across a story in SmallBiz, a bimonthly publication of Business Week magazine, about entrepreneurs who are reshaping the business of death.

Not a particularly funny topic, I realize, but there's a businesswoman featured in the story by the name of Esmerelda Kent who operates a very small operation called Kinkaraco Green Burial Shrouds in San Francisco.  Esmerelda and her team of two produce "all natural biodegradable shrouds for eco-friendly burials." And her "star moment," according to the magazine, was when she was "buried" on the HBO show Six Feet Under wearing one of her own creations.

The story of Esmerelda started me thinking that this could be a cute blog about how I wanted to be buried when the time comes. Something about the ultimate in political correctness for professional environmentalists seemed appropriate.

But then I started to think about how we recently marked the second anniversary of the death of my father Burt. And then I started to remember his last six months and the giggles left pretty quickly.

We had just moved to Pennsylvania to be near him when Dad's decade-plus battle with lung cancer began to spin out of control and it quickly became clear that he was not going to be with us much longer.

The moment he died, my sister and I entered the whirl of family gathering and funeral planning. It seems like only minutes before we were at a funeral home, signing papers, planning services and picking a casket.

It is here where the tale of Esmerelda and her eco-friendly shrouds comes back into the story. My memory of our time at the funeral home is blessedly vague but I do remember being more than a little horrified at the enormity of the caskets and what seemed to be an excess of natural resources. (Yes once an environmentalist, always an environmentalist.)

We were following my father's wishes so I, of course, did not object when we were led to a casket that was neither the smallest nor the largest available. I'm not sure I was capable of more than jumbled thoughts that afternoon and it was never a question that Dad would be laid to rest in a casket.

But when my time comes please send me on my way in an eco-shroud. Maybe even something designed by Esmerelda herself. I can't exactly say that I'll appreciate it, but I know the planet will.