My family and I are going to pay $28K each to freeze our bodies in liquid nitrogen tanks after we die. We hope to wake up in the future.

Dennis Kowalski has signed up to be preserved in a chamber that reaches freezing temperatures after death.Cryonics Institute

• Dennis Kowalski is head of the Cryonics Institute, which preserves people after they die in the hope they'll be revived in the future.
• The remains are stored in liquid nitrogen tanks that reach -320 degrees Fahrenheit. The service costs $28,000.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dennis James Kowalski, a 54-year-old resident of Milwaukee and the president of the Cryonics Institute. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I first learned about cryonics on TV when I was a young kid in the 1970s. Cryonics is the practice of suspending a person in very cold temperatures after they are legally dead in the hopes that they can be revived one day in the future. The TV segment really sunk into me, and after reading some books and doing research, I thought, "why not be frozen instead of buried or cremated?"