With a point of departure in an analysis of three different parts of a necklace which I had made after the cancerdeath of my life partner, and a poem which I wrote about the key components of the necklace, I shall explore and pose questions regarding what   material remains of  human bodies  can do.  My inspiration is Spinoza and Deleuze asking the question: what bodies can do rather than asking what they are. I will push the question into the framework of queer death studies, asking what dead bodies, in casu, human dead bodies and material remains from them, can do?  I will explore three modes of doing: material remains of human dead bodies acting  1) as palpable symbol of the past, 2) as material  embodiment of the present,   and 3) as  embodied sign which may or may not be working across  imaginary  boundaries and temporalities.   This explorative work-in-progress paper is part of my project on a feminist materialist reontologizing of death, andgrounded in its  beliefs and assumptions that poetic and theoretical/philosophical  explorations which do not prioritize one over the other, are very important in terms of making new modes of relating to death unfold.