Swear to TPTB, I could have written Paul's post on his Rocking Funeral plans (Not to denigrate the post...could have written the subject matter, not the excellent/unique take on it). I've thought often about our weird customs since attending my Uncle's military funeral last weekend. It was a perfect expression of Cal, just as Mom's was for her. So...what's mine?
Between seeing my friend Suzanne Lyon's excellent/poignant hootenanny film about middle-age love and the funeral business Undertaking Betty last week at the Crest (yes Naomi Watts is that incandescent in person...I'm girl-crushing) and re-viewing Eddie Izzard's DVD comedy routine about wanting his casket flung at a tree to give his guests one more laugh, I'm thinking:
my funeral = GO BIG OR GO HOME.
It's Spock ears, pirate talk and the Time Warp for my memorial revelers. Start growing your brass balls now or you can't come and get the awesome goodie bag. I'll be damned if the last party I throw isn't the best one ever. Arrrrrgh.
9 comments:
Part of me has always wanted a New Orleans-style funeral.
Lots o' food, a jazz trio -- even though I don't actually own any jazz albums beyond occasional Harry Connick, Jr., mid-80s, pre When Harry Met Sally material) -- and enough deep fried and pork-laden delicacies to help everybody see me a bit sooner with the assistance of cholesterol.
That, and for some incredibly vain reason I wanted friends to say what they liked about me. Not so much for my benefit, but for that of my parents and/or for my kids.
My wife knows me. My sibs know me. My friends know a great deal about me. But for whatever reason my parents or my kids may not get the whole picture.
I realize it can be somewhat embarrasing and guilt-inducing to learn about someone you think you know and love at their FUNERAL (it is for me, often), but get past the ego bruise, and as long as you're learning something, and you act on it to follow-up and find out more, it can probably be a way to keep the person in the front of your mind a little longer, right?
Enough from me. I now return this thread to our lovely hostess. ;-)
MIM
PS -- For you, babe, I'd seriously chip in out of my own funds to have a Scottish piper play Amazing Grace for you...
Of course, I'd like that to be at least 40 years down the road, but I'm a selfish b*st*rd.
MIM
I've never gotten any further thinking on this than making sure my wife and family know I expect every musician I've ever worked with to be invited and for them to be told that they all *better* bring their instruments and PA equipment -- just imagining the possible collisions of rock, jazz, folk and classical that could occur in such a jam session is smile-making for moi...
Paul hon, MY best party ever. Would never contend to best your shindig. You win, hands down. Except...I would DEFINITELY have some mediums wandering around the audience professing they were talking to me...and a ouija board for the kids next to those plastic ball pits they play in, next to some carnival games where everyone wins a stuffed animal (my fav games are the horse race things where you move your horsie by getting a ball in, and the launch a stuffed chicken into a pot game at Circus Circus...OH, and temporary tattoos and slumber party games! At some point, everyone would have to play Murder in the dark. And at the end of the service, everyone would reach into their goodie bag and pull out a colored roll of TP, and have a big TP party like at Rocky Horror! Cool! And then a skeleton that I pre-recorded a voice for would come out, like in that Vincent Price haunted house movie! (House on Haunted Hill, or Hill House Haunting, or the Haunting? so confusing, these titles.)
Mark, I don't think that's vain. I think it's sweet. And the Amazing Grace bagpiper? Soooo bizarre because we had that at Cal's funeral. At first all of the kids and I started giggling, and then it was like someone flipped a switch and we all started balling. Lovely idea, but I'm an ENFP...I want people laughing at my funeral and not being afraid of death. They can cry at home.
Lynne, sounds like a lovely expression of you. Mom and Uncle Cal used to argue over who would get to die first, and Mom won the race. Want to race? Fies are dropping like flies! Cancer or no, you've got good odds! Trees fall out of the sky at me! People careen cars into me...it's like a gypsy cursed me.
LDH, that's AWESOME. I'm not a jam musician, but I would still appreciate seeing that. And I'm sure for your friends and family it would be heaven
leia -- You are too kind. Forgive me for sounding insensitive here -- never my intent -- but I always thought that if my parents outlive me, I'd want them to know that I might have been a good guy.
I mean, I know my aprents are proud of me and love me, but I don't think they fully udnerstand me, to this day.
Partly to throw-in a cheap "I told you so, I'd like my friends to tell them soemthing about me that they KNOW I probably would never have told my parents. Nothing incriminating, but something good, especially given that my more artisitically-inclined friends are invariably the ones I've gone thru hell and back with, or gone out on a limb for, or helped talked down from ledges, or done things that my parents would never have thought to do.
Not their fault, but they were immigrants who came to the States knowing the only people they could trust were family, or people from their home country. Growing up, my parents didn't like us trusting ANYBODY non-Pilipino, meaning people from school, high school, etc. Go fig.
More than the "told you so," though, I'd want them to know, via my friends, that I made friends I could trust, and that trusted me right back. There's a reason why we make firends in HS and college and grad school, and why the really good oens stay with us. There is the family we're born into, and the family we choose for ourselves, either thru marriage, chidlbirth, or prolonged e-mails and telephone calls over decades.
I would hope my parents would be comforted in meeting my chosen family. If they don't survive me, and I pass on while my kids are still kids, then I would hope my kids would know that family and know me thru them,a s well.
OK, enough from me for now on this topic. Thanks for the venue.
MIM
PS -- BTW, the piper was purely on account of your previous Catholicism and your Spock ears reference. If it's good enough for Wrath of Khan...
MIM
Mark, I totally got all of that. No clarification needed.
I'd be honored to school your parents on your virtues upon your death. In FORTY YEARS. No one else around here is effing dying, got it?
Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk!
A toast, kid sis/ Force-sis/ leia...
"Cuarenta anos"
To forty years, babe.
[clink]
MIM
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