If I should Die...
Someday, I am going to. Though armed with this inevitability, I have yet to prepare. This is not to say that I am afraid of death; I'm not. It just seems incredibly morbid to drive out, locate a cemetery, and complete paperwork for a party that I will not attend.
It may seem horrible, or naive (or whatever), but I don't want to be buried. At least not in the traditional way: with a casket and a nameplate in an organized fashion. I want my body to be donated to science. I figure, with the prodding and poking and injecting that they do on me already, I will at LEAST be a familiar face. My dream job in death would be to be used as pranks at a teaching university, a la Bernie. If not, I want to be thrown at the Body Farm in TN. I could be a controlled experiment: Decomposition Rate of PsA medicated patient vs. (uncontrolled) nonsystemic lupus. Or, for the medically disinclined: the rotting chick in aisle five.
The least appetizing part of this death thing is the FUNERAL. I hate them. I find nothing more disturbing than sitting in awkward silence with others, in an oddly scented room, staring at a Corpsicle. This would only be fascinating to me if, in a twist of events, the funeral was for the undead - and they stood up and gobbled people during the Eulogy. I routinely entertain myself with such thoughts during funerals, and enter the dangerous phase known as the Church Giggles very early on. Not wanting to put others through this ordeal, I would like to pass on a funeral.
Chachi, however, does not understand this. He insists that, as the [inevitable] survivor, he would like to honor my memory with a celebration. I like to counter that, as I hate funerals, the best way to HONOR my memory is to skip this step. I think that he should have a party instead. Cuz, see, I LIKE those.
I am clearly going to need some help here. As I am too cheap to spring for a lawyer, I will plan my own funeral - here, with my beloved seven (or eight, if you count the nurse hunter in Hong Kong - ahem) as my witnesses. I am clearly going to need your help.
Are you game?
Labels: Short Stories
posted by rennratt at 7:48 PM
7 Comments:
I too want to be divvied up and passed around. Like John Prine sez: "thrown my brain to a hurricane, the blind can have my eyes, the deaf can have both'a my ears if they don't mind the size."
Then, whatever's left, immolate.
Plus, no damned funeral. Jeez. I don't like getting dressed up and being sad NOW, why should I want a bunch of people to do so after i'm gone? I know, let's have our funerals now, when we're alive and can hear the nice things people say about us. That sounds fun.
A keg, some volleyball, a cake with "Happy UNfuneral" on it would be nice, as would be some tiki torches, a pool, and rampant sexual liasons with everyone with whom you had ever wanted to have one. Hey, it's YOUR funeral, you should be able to do what you want!! :>
I want my ashes to be scattered to the 4 winds but my daughter says that no one is going deprive her of her chance to be in the mourning spotlight.
No caskets or cremation for me. I'm gonna be perfectly preserved by a taxidermist or the guys who did Lenin, stuffed in my favorite recliner and put on display at the front of the church. Then they'll play a recording of my favorite George Carlin outtakes, followed by my list of everlasting resentments. At the end of the service, I'll be carried, recliner and all, to my middle-finger-shaped mausoleum and entumbed with my collection of comic books.
Make that "entombed." Where's the damn spellcheck?
Oh, I want to be buried in a ridiculously ornate coffin with an elaborate funeral - gospel singers and standing and clapping in rhythym and everything.
In a masoleum, too. With pillars and a bench for my mourners to sit on when they visit me often.
I intend to be cremated. I'm an organ donor, so whatever's left will probably fit in a tupperware bowl anyway. Haven't decided where I want it tossed. Probably in the trash.
But there'd better be a killer memorial service. It's high time I start gettin' a little "me time." But not in a church. Someplace where people can say how wonderful I am, and then take a shot. And there's gotta be angel food cake.
I'll be cremated, if I have my way about it. I'm still planning the after-party, too... Not in a church, since I don't go to them now. But somewhere in the woods, in North GA or the Carolinas-- hopefully where I'll be living by then.
I'll be there, if I can swing it, to hear the toasts and to tickle people with errant breezes. But I'm warming up to the idea of an UN-funeral, though I'm not sure if anyone else will be game. It's so different when you're faced with the actual loss of someone, I think. Them being there, dancing on the coffee table and swinging their bra overhead just might take out the element of retrospection.
Hmm. I'll have to think on the party favors. I'm considering stocking up slowly at Party City during their Post Halloween sale. I see everyone drinking bourbon out of realistically-shaped skull goblets. A true celebration of DEATH.
I don't know if any of this is helping you plan, though.
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