Death has been a frequent topic of conversation around me lately. And not because I’ve knocked anyone off. Yet.
Frank and I talk about our funerals quite frequently. Well, not constantly but for what is usually considered a morbid conversation it comes up more than I suspect it does with most people. Mainly because I bring it up over and over again.
See, I’m slightly obsessed with my funeral. I want to make sure that Frank knows how I want it to go. All because of the trauma I had as a small child….
My grandfather died when I was 6. I was very close to him and his death hit me very hard. I remember bits and pieces of his funeral but what I remember the most is that they wanted me to walk up to the casket and say good-bye to a…. to a…. well, to a dead body. This started my abject fear of dead bodies.
When I was 8 my grandmother died. This time the funeral was on Halloween. Yup, had to skip trick or treating to go to a funeral. I was brave this time and after being dragged up to the casket, asked if I could touch her. No one had told me that she’d be cold. And not just not warm cold, but COLD cold.
Over the years there were more and more funerals. One thing they all had in common besides my bawling my eyes out was my inability to approach the casket. Every time my dad would walk up with me and keep his 6′4″ frame in-between me and the dearly departed. I rarely looked at the body because it would give me the creeps. I was convinced that the body wasn’t really dead and if I got too close it would grab me. (Hey, it happened on TV all the time.) Every time someone I knew died I would have nightmares about death for the next week.
At some point in life, rather early on, my sisters capitalized on my fear of death. Two of my sisters, I won’t name names but they are the ones who look the most alike, told me that if you touched a tombstone underneath a tree, the tree would come alive and eat you. I was young enough that I bought this hook, line, and sinker. So now not only was I terrified of dead bodies, I couldn’t stand cemeteries with trees in them. Then I saw Poltergeist. (Gah, I can’t find a good video of it!) Now I REALLY hated cemeteries with trees in them.
My dad LOVED cemeteries. He was all about genealogy. He drove us on family vacations where we would take side trips just to visit possible cemeteeies where ancestors were buried. Which is how I ended up in Erie, PA on the lake in a cemetery next to a paper mill. (Paper mills STINK, btw.) I was helping dad search for graves with the right names on them when I spotted a couple near a bush. As I walked over I saw a snake, and screamed. FORTUNATELY it turned out to have been chopped up by a lawn mower. I continued my tombstone hunting when I realized there was one under the bush. As I leaned down to brush the bush aside so I could see it, a rabbit jumped out of the bush. And I screamed again. Because, dude.
Then there was college. I found a bunch of family pictures one day and used the names written on the back of them to hunt down the owner through the student directory at my school. I got ahold of the person they belonged to and they asked if I would mind dropping them off at the anatomy lab.
Now, keep in mind I can be clueless sometimes.
So I go trotting off to do my good deed of returning the pictures and manage to walk into an empty room full of dead bodies on slabs. Seriously.
So yeah, I’m chalked full of death-y phobia goodness.
Then my mom got sick and died. I was still Mormon then and as the only “worthy” endowed Mormon girl who would be present at the time, my dad asked me to dress my mom. The same guy who knew that he had to keep his person between me and the caskets. He KNEW this was a big deal for me. But I did it because I was supposed to be honored and because I had a lot of guilt thrown on me to do it. (I tried to get out of it. I asked why we couldn’t wait until my other sister got in town and she could do it. She actually WANTED to do it.)
I managed to disassociate from the dressing of the body fairly well. I went in very clinical and kept it compartmentalized. I let the women who went with me do most of the dressing. In fact, I think they were a little perturbed I didn’t let them linger when we first went in with the body but let’s get real. I was 13 weeks pregnant, it was my MOTHER, and I was in a funeral home basement with her cold cold corpse. Yeah, lingering was NOT an option.
When we were done dressing her the funeral home came and took her out, put her in her casket, and brought her back in so I could approve of her make-up. It sucked. Mom would have been appalled at the lack of color. Granted, I understand why, but I made them do it better anyway. Then I asked if they had nail polish because Mom would have liked her fingernails painted. That was probably my favorite part because they let me paint her nails. I really felt like I was doing something for my mom one last time. It gave me a great amount of peace.
The viewing that night went fairly well. I did the soundtrack for it. MUCH better than the normal funeral home crapola. HOWEVER, I need to preview all songs requested if I ever do that again. Just because the title sounds good doesn’t mean it’s completely appropriate for a funeral home. Teehee.
Then we had a good ol’ Mormon funeral.
For the next year my kids talked about Grandma being in a wall to anyone and everyone they met. It was awesomeness. (She is in a mausoleum.) Not only that but they served pretend cookies off of her casket to the line of mourners during the ENTIRE viewing.
I’m not as scared of dead bodies anymore. I realize now that they aren’t going to come alive and get me. That they really are just dead cells. But I do know what I want done when I die. I know how I want my funeral to go.
I want a themed funeral. Or rather a costumed funeral. I think that everyone who shows up should have to come as naked clowns.
I mean, seriously, who can worry about the dead body if everyone is naked and dressed as a clown?
That and I want to be buried under the largest, scariest looking tree that can be found. So it can come alive and eat people who touch my tombstone.
Though in all honesty, I want Frank (if he doesn’t precede me which he may very well at the rate he pisses me off sometimes) to do whatever will bring him the most comfort, as long as it’s cheap. Because dude, I’ll be dead. What do I care? Just no open casket with that thin-lipped, see-through finger shitola. If they can give me a smirk then they can have an open casket. Something funny. And different. Ooooooooooo, and maybe hire a comedian to give the eulogy. That I will write before I go. Because, dude. (I’ve already told Frank that if he dies first I’ll do an open casket for him, but I’m having them put him in the wrong way. I want his feet on the pillow and his head covered. Because I think that would be HYSTERICAL.)
But yes, I hate funerals the way they are. They are SUCH a downer. Have a party. Move out of your comfort zone. Don’t buy loads of flowers that will get sent to old fogey homes afterwards. Don’t trudge past my cold cold dead body in a line after sitting through people telling you how wonderful I was and how now I’ve returned to wherever the hell people go when they die. (Teehee! I used hell and when people die in the same sentence!) If you haven’t peed your pants from laughing so hard by the end of my funeral I will come back and haunt you until you pee your pants.
So what about you all? What do you think of death? What do you think of funerals? Do you all think they are done as poorly as I think they are?
