It's peculiar -- I have two kind of fundamental things I think about funerals that aren't really compatible (which is part of the reason I wanted this thread to exist).
The first is that I tend to think of funerals as only being "real" when they're very high church -- like, the mental picture is of organ music and gothic architecture. This is odd because, well, a. I'm a mail-order minister who's done weddings and baptisms in backyards and not seen anything wrong with that, and b. I don't think I've ever been to a funeral that involved both gothic architecture and organ music. Some have come close, though. I want them, more than any other observance, to be sort of formal and heavy.
The second thing is a memory from a memorial service I attended. It wasn't the first one I'd been to, but it was the first one that had nothing to do with my parents. A friend of mine at college chose a particularly dramatic way to die, and we had a school-wide memorial on the bayside. This was... 1988, I think. He was very into the whole Sub-Genius/Illuminatus! thing, and I remember that he'd told his parents some scholarship had fallen through then used the money they sent to buy a top-of-the-line Amiga computer. They'd sent him to Bible school for high school, and I don't think he'd ever forgiven them.
So anyway, we're sitting on folding chairs by the shores of Sarasota Bay, and they're THERE, you know, sitting in front in dark suits looking just as shocked as we were. And people read poems and sang songs and all that stuff, then Dan took the mike.
Dan was a dedicated prankster and class clown -- brilliant guy, wordy, funny as hell -- and he said something that I've never been able to forget.
"This isn't what he would've wanted," he said. "He would have wanted us to all be wearing Nixon masks and singing 'We'll all go together when we go,' or something. Not this...."
There was an involuntary, nervous giggle that crossed the crowd. And then, for what I think was the only time in my college career, Dan looked awkward, sort of shrugged, and his voice trailed off. He put the mic down. And I remember the guy's parents nodding and smiling, and I remember thinking, "Dan is right. He's speaking the truth. And they recognize he's speaking the truth." And I remember being very glad he'd done that.
So those are the conflicting thoughts I have about funerals -- formal observance, and speaking the truth. (And also that the best eulogies are ones where the speaker gets the mourners to laugh -- because people are there because they remember joy.) |
