October 3, 2011

Funerals Are For The Living

Once in a while when someone dies this lovely conversation comes up at our house. My husband went to a funeral recently complete with a yelling Baptist minister trying to save everyone’s souls and make as much money as he could off the deal. Guilt pays.

Don’t you just love it when a preacher lies about knowing a person and says how he just knows Joe would want you to repent and give your soul to Jesus so you can join him in heaven? The old coot didn’t even go to church and I'm pretty sure he's having a cocktail with the devil about now.

My husband wants me to make a decision about how I want my funeral and remains taken care of. Between that and the kill your wife shows he watches I get a little worried sometimes. Just kidding.

I'll tell you one thing for sure, if there's a yelling preacher within fifty yards of my dead body I'll rise up and haunt the people responsible for the atrocity.

My husband wants to be cremated and thinks I should too or at the very least let him know what my wishes are.

Here’s what I tell him every time. Funerals and burials are for the living. Whatever my kids or whomever is still around wants is okay by me. I don’t give a hoot what they do with my remains. I won’t be here so I don’t care. Whatever makes the people left here on earth happy is really okay; I don’t care.

Cremate me, bury me, donate me to science, taxidermy me and stand me in a corner dressed as Cher, I don’t care. I am okay with whatever anyone wants to do, just quit with the morbid talk. Seriously. I don’t want to make someone responsible for a heap of dirt in a cemetery or the guardian of my urn. I think the living should make those decisions.

I’m going to live until I’m a hundred so I’ve got a long ways to go before anyone gets to deal with my corpse.

The women in my family live a long time. My father’s mother’s mother lived to be in her 90’s and had a boyfriend who was 76 (She outlived him by the way.); she chewed tobacco, lived in her own home, mowed her own lawn and drove her own car. I figure since I don’t chew tobacco that ought to give me a few more years.

My father’s mother is eighty years old, healthy as a horse and takes care of my step grandfather.

What do you think? Do you think the dead person should decide what happens to their remains or do you think it’s up to the living?