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Oh hey guys, meet Eternal Communication Systems.

What is that disembodied alarm pad, you ask?  Why, it’s a recorder that is put in the casket with your dead relative that goes off with periodic messages for about 10 years after they die.

ECS will record up to 15 messages. Each message will play once a year for up to a 10 year period. The lengths of each message can be as long as 75 seconds. The power source for ECS relies on 10 year Lithium Disulfide batteries. The ECS device attaches to the back of most standard 5×7 picture frames and will normally be placed inside a casket.

EXAMPLES OF TYPES OF MESSAGES

  • A minister leaves a blessing to be played annually for the deceased.
  • A Widow leaves a message for deceased husband on wedding anniversary.
  • Parents leave message to be played on deceased son’s birthday.
  • A Best friend records a messaged to be played on New Year’s Eve for the deceased.
  • A Girlfriend leaves a messaged to be played on the anniversary of the day the met.

This is my face for this product.

The fuuuu…..

I would NEVER tell anyone how to grieve.  Well, I take that back.  I would totally do that.  Not tell, per se, but make suggestions that I think might be healthier than the cultural norm.  But I would never say that one method is fundamentally better than another.  Cultural relativism and all that.

But there’s an issue with Eternal Communication Systems that’s the same issue with embalming and hyper expensive sealed caskets.  The idea of false preservation.  The idea that your husband (not your husband’s corpse, your husband himself) is down there in the ground.  You had him embalmed to preserve him from rotting.  You bought the titanium sealer casket so no bugs or dirt or water would ever touch him.  And now you’re talking to him.  Again, not the slightly decomposed corpse of him- HIM. He’s down there, lonely and sad and needing your voice every year to tell him happy anniversary.

It’s different than general prayers.  Prayers assume the dead are always with us, etc.  This assumes the dead are with us literally.  Alive, in their bodies, trapped underground listening.

The fact is, once the seal on the casket breaks (from a cemetery lawnmower or backhoe), water floods in, the body gets wet and soupy, the Eternal Communication System gets logged with water and spits out a sad, slow motion greeting to a decomposing body ten years after it has died.

I would not tell you not to buy this product.  But I would suggest you might also look into natural burial or cremation, to get disabuse you of the idea that ANYTHING is “eternal.”

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