Funereal Observations

I am becoming a funeral connoisseur. It began with my father’s funeral in 1981. He was a 32nd degree Mason. My mother did not approve, but she relented and allowed the Masonic ritual to be performed at Daddy’s interment.

Having been raised in my mother’s very austere church, I found the ritual wondrous. Masonic brothers stood around my father’s casket and recited a comforting liturgy while folding a carpenter’s apron. Daddy would have been pleased.

I don’t remember attending a lot of funerals for the next twenty years, but suddenly I was spending a lot of time in funeral homes and churches. Most of the funerals were disappointing. They seemed irrelevant to the lives we were supposed to be celebrating. Occasionally, a funeral service would be a little less generic, like the service for a former black student of mine. It was very interactive. There were lots of “amens” and hats. I wish I had worn a hat. I felt out of place, not because I was white but because I was so inhibited and hatless, which was probably because I was white.

I attended the funeral of another student who would have been appalled at the somberness of the service. Granted it was heartbreaking that he was just in his thirties when he died, but he was one of the most talented, creative young men I had ever met. His funeral didn’t reflect that, and it made me sad that most of the people in attendance had no idea who he really was.

When my mother died at the age of ninety, I wanted to speak at her funeral and expressed my wishes to the preacher. He said that was his job. He was an awful speaker and didn’t do my mother justice. He didn’t know my mother when she was much younger and full of life. He didn’t know that I wanted to strangle him and put him out of my misery.

About a year-and-a-half later, I hosted my baby sister’s funeral in my home. My older sister read a poem that our sister had written about all of us cooking together. A little more tearfully than expected, I read the eulogy I had written. Then, according to her wishes, we traipsed out to the pasture behind my house and scattered her ashes. She would have loved it. She was the center of attention, and the people she loved most were there.

I have attended funerals at which the deceased was celebrated with anecdotes, both loving and humorous; funerals at which the preacher saw an opportunity to save souls (those are the worst!); and funerals so generic that I passed the time by planning my own funeral.

I don’t want a standard funeral. I want a party. It would be held in a community building of some sort. Everyone would bring his or her favorite dish and sit around eating and reminiscing. The formalities would include people getting up and telling their favorite memory about me, preferably something funny.

Then one of my children or grandchildren would read my poem:

Cradle

I crawl into the lap of the Universe

And rest my head in the curve of her arm.

She sighs to have me back

And hums a melody filled with stars.

I breathe in her fragrance of whirling atoms

And exploding suns.

I close my eyes in sleep

Forever.