"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

Title credit: Mark Twain


A friend told me about mindbump.com, a generator that provides random user-submitted blog-prompts. This is far preferable to the "write every day" prompt sets I've found... I don't want to tell you about my favorite piece of furniture, or take you on a verbal tour of my pantry, or photograph the contents of my fridge.

So anyhow- today's prompt... 

"You get to plan your own funeral.  What flowers do you want, and what songs do you want played?"

Maybe it's because I have always worn way too much black, or maybe it's because I have a disease that makes a habit of knocking people off young, or maybe it's just because I'm a forward thinker in some departments - this isn't even a hard subject for me.  I've got this nailed down, and the people who need to know about my wants and wishes either already have the info, or it's prepared for their use when they do need it.  The concept of death isn't quite as scary to me as the concept of dying without having my shit together; analyze that for what you will.  All that being said- don't you DARE interpret this as any kind of "sign" or need for action... I'm doing well.  I'm not sicker than I let on, and I have no plans of this being needed anytime in the near future, k?  K.  I'm just trying to write more, and not about things like housecats or diet plans.

So... flowers.  I don't care about what they are, or their colors. I care that they're live, because live flowers are some of my favorite things in the world, and I prefer that they're not roses- because roses are stupidly expensive because of the cultural sentiments attached to them, and you can have like, 70 daisies instead of 12 roses, and wouldn't you rather have 70 daisies?  Roses have a time and place, for sure... but not at my funeral.  Seasonal and fragrant and pretty are what matters.

Slide show!  Oh, absolutely.  My life is FUN and has been documented well, thus far, and I'm nonphotogenic enough that the pictures of me floating around out there are sure to get a giggle or two... but as much as I love them, Squid and Mouse don't get to build the slide show since they have the absolute worst of the bad photos in their possession.  Sabine and Sara get that responsibility.

Music?  Yes, please.  The recessional shall be "Pocket Full of Sunshine," because I know that that song elicits the dumbest grins in some of the people that I love the most.  Somewhere in there, "Foot of Canal Street" needs to make an appearance (the Paul Sanchez or Cowboy Mouth version, plz, no offense to John Boutte).  Other than that?  Whatever will make people happy, but no "End of the Road," no "Freebird," no songs designed to increase the sobbing factor.

Eulogies!  Oh.... wow. I could totally write a wishlist for that department.  Having delivered a couple of my own, though, I know it'd be a really crappy thing to do to have personal requests planned out, because sometimes, people don't WANT to go to a funeral, or they're not going to be in the mindset to speak.  BUT- I'm surrounded by wellspoken, flattering, verbose people... and it'll be covered.  Humorous recollections are encouraged.  If my funeral turns out to be a roast at which I don't get to give the final speech, that's cool.  Open mic? Why not.

Of course, I do want to be cremated... and I want something epic done with my cremains.  Scatter them into a fire at the funeral's after party, or take them into the mountains or divvy me up into lockets or whatever... the after doesn't really matter as long as it's done with love, which is pretty much how I think about the whole thing.

As for everything else?  It'll work itself out.  Sara and Sabine get to circumnavigate the depths of my will, mostly by making sure all of my cool stuff goes to good homes and any cats I have at the time live fat, happy lives with lots of sunbeams...

...but that's still a long, long time away.