Well, Sarah had got to the age when she had to make a choice between a longer and useless life, or a shorter and useful one. The second seemed best. She wanted her death to be profitable to others. Of course, people could be sustained by  your ideas, your writings, your sayings, by the way you had made love. But they could also be sustained by your flesh.  She had always been attracted by the idea of the Sky Burials -  the eagles and the vultures swooping down for their meal. But it was (as she recalled from wildlife documentaries) always something of a scrum, and that might upset folk with delicate sensibilities. If people stumbled across such a buffet on a windy headland, it would spoil their walk for sure. 

Sarah liked the idea of being eaten by her kin. But which bit would they start with first? Her breasts? Her eyelids? Her liver, which was possibly the oldest and most jaded part of her? And what about the possible ill-effects of eating an uncooked brain? She recalled the frightful tales about Creuzfeld-Jakob disease.That would never do. Then she read about a fabled  rite called Mellification. Some ancient sages were reputed to have poisoned themselves with honey, and when they died, their bodies had been soaked in it for a hundred years. When their coffins were opened, their candied corpses were good for any ailment. Sarah had always had a sweet tooth, and she resolved to give it a try. 

She rapidly became a connoisseur of different type of honey: Manuka, Raw, Queen Bee. And she began to distinguish between the various types of flowers it was made from : clover, basil, lavender. She savoured them all. But as she ate nothing else, she became more and more sluggish, and gradually sank into the sweetest slumber. She died without knowing it. Her life had occasionally been sticky, on amorous afternoons: and now her death was too. Sarah had given instructions that her corpse was to be preserved in honey, rather like Nelson’s in brandy. It was to be put into a safe place for a hundred years. 

Her sleep was long. Someone opened the coffin lid, and she looked wonderful: a glistening honeycomb, an iced fondant. Her closed eyelids were scattered with a hoarfrost of crystals, her breasts were white, her nipples were glacé cherries, her vagina was full of honey. Caring hands lifted her out, and her healing task began. She was finely sliced and fed to the needy, the sad, the sick. And every sliver on their tongues transformed them, because they wished it so. And from some remote place, Sarah knew at last that out of sweetness, strength must come.