When I was in the insurance business I felt it was mandatory for me to attend the funerals of my clients and their families. I would see the family of the deceased mourning, family and friends visiting, and then there was the curious.
I could sometimes over hear people talking in small groups wondering about things that didn’t concern them. The big questions were: How did they die, how much insurance did they have, who was going to inherit the property?
I would think better subjects to discuss might be: how can we help the family, shouldn’t we offer to watch the kids, we should make sure we visit with the family often until they are on their feet again. Aren’t that what friends do?
I no longer attend funerals unless it is a family member and then only the immediate not nieces and nephews, it is not that I don’t care about the person who died or their family, it’s just that I don’t intend to be there for them. I don’t want to tell them how sorry I am or that it is a bad thing. I guest I don’t want to lie.
In the Midwest there are a lot of small towns where it seems everyone attends the funeral of anyone considered a VIP of the town. How much is out of respect? How much is out of curiosity? How much is because they don’t want to be talked about if they don’t attend?
I recently asked someone that had attended a funeral, of someone that I know they hardly knew why they went. I challenged them to tell me what they felt about the person that made them go. The truth was they were given time off from work so they went.
I have left instructions to be cremated and my ashes to be spread over any golf course so I can haunt the golfers there. It is the cheapest type funeral because you don’t need a fancy casket. I also have instructions not to have a viewing or any service that you need to pay for.
I believe that there are some, maybe not all, funeral homes that take advantage of the families at their time of mourning. It is when they are the most vulnerable to greed. The funeral home person may not tell the family what the bare necessities are but rather show them a range of options above what they can actually afford. I have been a believer in prearranged funeral for a long time.
This is just my opinion but if you think about it a while it makes sense: I don’t want anyone to come and visit me after I’m dead because they never visited me before I died. I don’t want anyone to cry about my passing if they didn’t care about my welfare while I was alive. If you want to know who gets what it’s none of your business. Unless I was shot or poisoned I probably died of natural causes. Hopefully it was while I was in bed asleep.
If you think you are a friend of the family then contribute to the cost of my internment, if you just feel like you need to contribute give it to a charity.
Life will go on after I die! Some people will remember me for my humor, others for my honesty, still others for my abilities. What ever the reason, as long as they remember me I shall not have died but lived on in memory.
It is said that from dust we came and to dust we shall return, what matters is how long it takes us. Being placed in a casket, buried six feet under ground or being burned to ashes, you are just as dead and gone.
Mark not a place on this earth where I have never been while alive, but mark for me a place in your heart where I will always live.
