In My Time Of Dying

From time to time, I think about planning my funeral. You know the kind of thing. The music, the readings and who’s going to do the readings, the photos to display and all the rest of it. After all, I’d want a funeral I’d be pleased to attend myself. But last night, I was talking to an old friend who was considering that for his own death there would be no funeral at all. I didn’t know that was even a thing, but it set me to thinking. What’s the point of a funeral, specifically mine?

I am not suggesting that once I expire, my family should simply put me in the black wheelie bin to go out with the Friday refuse collection because that might be a little unsettling for the collectors, but there must be something short of an actual funeral, not least because of the cost involved. I learned last night that a recent funeral set a family back around £8000 which was clawed back from the estate of the deceased. Now that’s not something I want to happen. If I had that kind of money in the bank, I’d rather the family spent it on something better than a service, a coffin, egg and cress sandwiches and all the other paraphernalia that goes with death.

I suppose a funeral is to enable people to grieve or to celebrate someone’s life and I haven’t thought that one through yet, but there must be a way around it. Maybe hiring a back room in a pub with a microphone and a speaker system would be sufficient. I can’t say with any sincerity that I have actually enjoyed a funeral because it’s an occasion where you say goodbye to someone you like or even love. If there is a way of dispensing with the formalities, I’m up for it, at least in principle.

The other bit to remember is that it’s all very well for me to plan my funeral, but the problem is I’ll be too dead to enjoy it. I can agonise as to which Steely Dan song to play – it’s Reelin’ In The Years at the moment – but I won’t be able to sing along or play air guitar to Elliot Randall’s stellar solo. And the odds are that not everyone in the room will share my love of the song. So, in the moments before I turn into ashes, people will be forced to listen to a song they don’t know or like. In which case, why bother with my favourite songs at all?

I have made no plans yet, but I am going to check my options. I don’t want to bankrupt funeral directors or florists who depend on us dying but by the same token, I’d like to shuffle off this mortal coil with as little fuss as possible. If I can miss my own funeral, I might be doing everyone a favour, including  myself because I won’t have the pressures of planning what happens.