DMB Digest: Funerals, get off my lawn!
A rant about our practice of passing.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Three Idahoans go to a Romanian funeral. It lasts for three hours.
I guess you had to be there. While funeral comedy may not be my calling, this was in fact a true story. And it got me thinking. On the way home from said funeral, I advised my family on how my own funeral should play out. (This is not me being morbid. It’s simply a fact that I will die. It’s a very high probability I will die from cancer at some point in the next thirty years. Since I promised the Wife I would die after her, I suppose I have to come up with enough stuff to do until then.)
First off, I don’t want my funeral to be used as an opportunity for sermonizing. I have plenty opportunity to do that while I’m alive. (And I take advantage frequently.) Don’t be like Ebenezer Scrooge, blah, blah, blah. Be more like Scrooge McDuck. There, we’ve gotten that out of the way.
Second, there shall be no sitting in uncomfortable chairs while wearing scratchy clothing. In fact, clothing is to be optional. And sitting is certainly not required. I mean, I’ll be dead. What will I care? Decorum is for the living.
But there will be one non-fungible, unbreakable rule for attending my wake. No smartphones. Well, I suppose I can make an exception in the case of using the phone as a prop in telling some embarrassing story about my life by sharing an awkward and/or inappropriate photo of me or something I orchestrated. But the moment you start sharing pictures of your pets, my spirit will slap the phone out of your hand. Consider yourself warned.
No Candy Crush. No Minecraft. No texting. And heaven forfend, absolutely no TikTok. For my part, I’ll pound it into my surviving family members not to bore you with ceremony. For your part, you have to actually focus on in-person, human relationships.
But don’t worry. The most important guideline for my wake is that there shall be booze and cocktail weenies aplenty. As a matter of fact, I’m requesting a hot sauce bar. I don’t care what you dip in the hot sauce. It can be anything from chips to said cocktail weenies. Maybe I’ll open the whole thing up like a potluck. That way, it’s guaranteed there will be at least one food item there you’ll enjoy. (Unless you are one of those types who brings something even you don’t like. For shame.)
I’ve instructed my youngest son that the only speech made from up front is to be an AI voice of myself presenting my prepared thoughts on the invisible real—fifteen minutes, tops. After that, everyone is to simply visit, eat and drink until they’re ready to go home.
I don’t know how it works on the other side—if I’ll be allowed to attend the event. Or if I’ll simply be too involved elsewhere. But considering the bending of time and space I can only assume I will have access to, it seems reasonable I should be available for a brief Q&A at your leisure. Although, to participate, I suppose you would need to be open to the mystical side of stuff (enter my thoughts on the invisible real). Having said all that, there really will be little point. (Here comes the sermonizing part.) It’s all a singular universe: the material and the spiritual. We’ve been given training wheels or governors that restrict us with the material, inviting us to practice the spiritual from the safety of the physical—like fishing from the shore. But at some point we’re gonna cast off, leaving restrictions and restraint behind. It’s the trajectory that we set in the here and now, before the leap.
So I won’t really be going anywhere. As the kids say these days, I’ll just be leveling up. As I prefer to think of it, I’ll be in creative mode.
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"Creative mode"! I love that! #gamertalk