Anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) deduced from her research clearly that funeral rituals are of and for the living. The correlation between self awareness and intelligence is obvious but the unhappy third element of that triad is the knowledge that we will most certainly die. As far as we can tell, animals are unaware that they were born or that they will die. In that vacuum they live ‘happy as a clam’ and good for them. It’s a scary, unescapable legacy.
Once upon a time, people died at home. Death was as natural as birth. You could see it coming, something you could count on. My grandmother died in her sleep on the couch in our living room while I slept in my bed upstairs. We don’t do that much anymore. Our culture is obsessed with “Young.” Death is depressing and we’ll have none of it. We have nursing homes where old people go to die, with dignity if you believe the brochure and just as importantly, out of sight. Shortly after my dad moved to a place called Foxwood he told me, “This is the place where you walk in the front door and leave out the back on a gurney.” He knew he would die there. As much as we would like to live, happy as clams, we can not. Funerals are for mourning our own unavoidable passing as well, whether we understand it or not; evolution and human nature have taken care of that. It is the time and place when it’s appropriate to vent that double sorrow.
How many times have we heard people say they want their funeral moved up a year or so before they stop breathing to enjoy all of their friends at their ‘last hurrah’. I think it’s a great idea; macabre maybe but why not? I could write my own eulogy. It might go something like this.
FRANK STEVENS 1939 - 20??
Born the 2nd of three sons to Frank & Dorothy, he was naive and shy, loved to play games, especially games with a ball. He loved ladies but found them intimidating. It set up a life-long dichotomy that he could navigate but never reconcile. The boy could entertain himself with a clothes pin and a rubber band. The demands of work required self discipline but his imagination did not. Never lacking for imagination he followed it; his teachers said he was lazy but what did they know?
He grew up reluctantly. The military bridged an awkward gap between aimless diversion and gainful purpose. Physically, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. But he was never the best, not even “Really Good”. But he was good enough to make the team, to play and to learn the lesson - being a small part of something grand is wonderful. Skydiving was his path to becoming, really good at something. People noticed; recognition is strong medicine. That self confidence would be a springboard to college and a career in education. When he had to chose between the adult work force and hanging out with teenagers, it was no contest.
Reinventing the self was always a necessity, nothing to do with philosophy or insight. Living was like landing an airplane; any landing you can walk away from is a good one. Curiosity always trumped ambition. All he ever wanted was, to understand why, and how it works; to be loved. After that he wanted to please others and if possible, to have a fun toy. He tried to be a good son, a Christian to please his parents but like the Ugly Duckling, life had other plans for him. The classic Agnostic, he made the distinction between disbelief and unbelief; the absence of proof doesn’t prove anything. His doubts were great and many while his Faith could neither float nor fly. To meet his spiritual needs he trusted Gibran and Twain. Not knowing the unknowable simply left him with an inert question mark. ‘Whether or Not’ was simply irrelevant, it didn’t matter. Here and now, this life was enough.
The only reservations he had about his own passing would be that someone might, in good faith, allow a cleric to pray or preach over his bones. That would be horrible. “Even when they believe their own hyperbole,” he would say, “they are salesmen exploiting someone’s grief.”
When the sun turns into a red giant and Earth itself has been reduced to star dust, it will have been enough to have been here for a while. In the movie Grumpy Old Men, 95-year old Burgess Meredith scolds his 65-year old son, Jack Lemon, “When you die, all you get to take with you is your experience.” Whatever becomes of his ashes, Frank’s experiences will still be his experiences. He would say, “Life is for the living; you don’t have that much time.”
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