Today I went to pick up my son from Cambridge University where he is studying Computer Science. He was going to come on the train, but when I heard it was a 'replacement bus service' and going to take him more than twice as long, in the pouring rain, I decided to play the 'kind mum' card and drive over to pick him up.
I like time in the car with my kids, as it is a good chance to natter, without distractions. He was telling me about the medic students, and how they have to make their dead bodies last for the year, as they are in such short supply. He told me that it was common practice for the students to write to the relatives of their bodies, to let know what they were doing. I immediately and instinctively felt very positive about that, and thought what a good idea - to let the relative of the donated dead body know that ...it was being useful, and how.
We then both went on to have a slightly weird conversation about the positives of leaving our own bodies for something useful. We decided we both quite fancied a life after death as skeletons. They are apparently quite hard to come by, and very expensive! You can imagine the conversation, as we whizzed down the A14, and talked of picturing ourselves in some lecture theatre, as 'Max' or 'Jane' ...The Skeletons.
Not a conversation I would ever easily have predicted having with my son! But it was strangely comforting ... If my old bones are up to it in the future, you never know!
