meat sacks

so you know. i go to a lot of funerals. i mean, i go to the regular number that normal people go to- relatives, relatives of friends, friends, etc. but then my former job involved going to a lot of funerals.

so i've seen all kinds. and that gives me a lot of perspective about what i'd want in a funeral for myself. and this kind of gets into the psychology of how you percieve human life. do you think you're a soul inside a meatsack or do you think you're just a meatsack that happened somehow to have perceptions, thoughts, and feelings while you were alive but that all disappears when your light goes out?

personally, i believe the latter. i think when your light goes out, it goes out, and that's that. except for the memories that living people have of you.

so in one sense, i believe funerals should be whatever those people who you left behind want. i get that. whatever helps them deal with the fact that you are no more.

but, if you just ask me what i want, i don't really want anything. i don't want people performing songs or putting up a pictoral history of my life, or releasing balloons, or a somber service, or a celebration of my life or anything. at all. i don't want a luncheon or a eulogy or hymns. nothin' that's what i want.

that said, i really basically would leave it up to my family, my son and my daughter to decide what they want. and what helps them. and if it would help them financially to do nothing at all, i'd be just fine with that.

i always laugh a bit when i think about how my brother and i made decisions about the funeral service for my father. my mother, of course, had her ideas, but for the most part my brother and i were ruled by the strong admonition by my father, before he died, telling us that we were not to spend a penny more than his GI bill covered. so when it came time to pick a casket, we went for the basic box. because it was cheap. and the funeral home people seemed rather upset with us, because my father was well known in our community and they figured we'd have a large, lavish funeral. and i almost felt like they felt we were skimping out, not just on their profits, but on his prominence in life. whatever, my brother and i didn't care. and it was one of the rare times in our lives, that i feel like my brother and i really bonded over something. and it amused us both no end. to say, "only the cheapest, for our dad." my dad would have laughed with us, had he been there. and that makes me happy when i think about it.

but so, yeah. i don't guess i want anything. except what satifies both of my kids. because after all, what am i besides a meatsack, except to them. i guess what i really don't want is for people to make more of me than i ever was. talking about me like i was wonderful and perfect, when i was nothing really but plenty-flawed and messed up and human.