Barbara Gowdy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The story’s name is taken from a line in the Frank O’Hara’s poem “Ode on Necrophilia”, and was inspired by a newspaper article Gowdy read about a young California woman who hijacked a hearse on its way to a funeral, took the corpse of the young man inside the coffin to a motel room and had sex with it for several days before being caught by the police.