Got three funeral invites over the past week or so. One was
to Athenae’s grandmother’s, which I would never have missed for the world. When
you have a good friend, you’re always there.
It was one of the sadder moments
I’ve seen recently, though, because when you see a hurt friend and you can’t
solve what hurts them, you hurt with them. While it was a beautiful service, a
giant gathering of people with the deceased present is an awful lot to deal
with.
While we were talking, she told me point-blank: “Don’t let
anyone do this kind of thing for me.”
That wasn’t the first time I heard someone tell me that.
When Dad’s mom died, my Mom’s mom, dying of cancer herself, managed to make it
to the funeral. As I sat with her during the visitation, she turned to me and
said, “I don’t want a funeral.”
“Mom wants to have a service for you…” I began.
“Is this REALLY what you want for me?” she asked. “All these
sad people? All this foofah? All this misery? Why?”
I couldn’t answer that one. She had had a rough go of it.
About a year earlier, her husband died. She cobbled together what little money
she could for a newspaper announcement only to have the obit she paid for
include three misspellings and a number of errors. Trying to explain the
benefit of these death rituals seemed pointless.
When Grandma died three months later, Mom had the service.
Grandma wasn’t too far off in her assessment of how it felt.
Honestly, I hate death. It freaks me out. In fact, one of
the recurring dreams I have when I’m horribly stressed is that I’m dead but not
really. I can’t move and I’m being buried in a glass coffin. As shovel after
shovel of dirt hits the casket, I want to scream but can’t. It’s usually those
dreams that have me walking the floors at 3 a.m.
The Missus has been on me to have a will made out, a plan
set up and more. The closest I’ve gotten is buying our plots in the family
portion of the cemetery back home. I took her there and jokingly told her,
“Look, I bought you land!”
So here’s the deal: I confront fear and discomfort with
humor. I decided that Ms. A is right: The funeral route is no route for me. I’m
done playing Mr. Nice Guy with the death industry. Here’s my “preplanned life-exit
strategy.”
Read on with a grain of salt.
Doc