Scrnwrt mentioned "kick ass funeral"

So if money was no object, what kind of funeral would you like to have? Would you have a band? What would they play? etc.

-- Anonymous, November 14, 2000

Answers

I'd stipulate in my will that if I died before Ian, I'd want all of his favourite arcade machines to be at the funeral, so he would be distracted and maybe it would make him not so sad.

But actually I don't want a funeral. I can't stand the thought of people looking at me when I'm asleep or otherwise unaware that they are, so lying in a casket and letting people see me at the worst possible angle is my idea of a nightmare. Plus, there's the being dead part.

-- Anonymous, November 14, 2000

I used to say I'd want the cheapest funeral possible. I still would, probably. But I think I'd also want to do something weird like make a mix CD and have copies passed out to everyone who showed up to pay respects. And I'd ask for fake flowers on my grave. Actually, I'd want to be cremated, if that's cheaper.

-- Anonymous, November 14, 2000

I've never thought I wanted a big, fancy funeral with a bunch of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Well, okay, I kinda did once, long ago. Bagpipes and open casket and all. But what I finally decided was that I just want people to laugh and remember all the good, fun times. I'd want everyone who wanted to come up to the microphone to go ahead and spill their favorite memories about us. I'd want people to feel free to talk and meet each other, and joke and laugh. No crying. I don't want people to be too sad for too long.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

You lot are really morbid. I mean how long do you spend thinking about these things. Death, funerals... I mean if you were all police officers, undertakers or medics, I suppose I could understand... Sheesh. Isn't one's funeral for the people left behind?

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

I don't spend a LOT of time thinking about it, but in a year where I sat by my father-in-law's bedside for three days, watching him die, and in a year where my nephew died, and in a year where my aunt died, it has crossed my mind a few times. But thanks for judging.

Bagpipes are gorgeous. There are buskers in town who are always playing them when I go shopping, and they're pretty much the only buskers to whom I ever give money.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

My mom has always said that she wants her funeral to be more of a party celebrating her life than a sad time with people all upset. And she wants Anita Baker to sing at the party. Don't ask me why.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

The after-funeral get-together we had when my father-in-law died was exactly what I think he would have wanted. We had tons of people back to his house afterwards, and I'd arranged the catering and ordered about B#500 worth of alcohol (a lot of which is still sitting in the larder at the house...hmm), and everyone just talked and joked and laughed, and his two granddaughters played in the back garden. It was really lovely, but it did make me sad to think how much he would have enjoyed being there himself.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

Yikes - dealing with mortality in the morning! Well, I'm going to be cremated, attend my wake, and be scattered somewhere (haven't decided the location yet). Maybe hubby will keep me on the mantle for awhile. I find the idea of being embalmed and displayed creepy, hence the decision on cremation.

A little off-topic - I saw this show last year where some guy here in Canada was putting people's cremated remains inside either bullets or duck decoys. I guess this enables the dearly departed to go hunting one last time. Might be good for victims of hunting accidents.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

I honestly don't care much about my funeral... it's for the comfort of the people "left behind," so whatever makes them feel better. I just know that I want to be cremated (I don't like the idea of taking up a 6 ft plot of earth to, um... rot away). If The Husband-Type Man wants to keep my ashes, fine. Otherwise, scatter me in the ocean.

Prolly the only specifications I'd have are fresh flowers (very important to me ceremonially) and the hymn "For the Beauty of the Earth." Thassall.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

I don't like the idea of being buried, but neither do I like the idea of being cremated. Over here in the UK, funerals (like my father-in- law's) are commonly held at the crematorium ('the crem'). They have the casket -- yes, you buy a nice, expensive casket just for it to be burned, too -- on this shelf-type thing with a conveyor belt-type thing underneath it, and a heavy velvet curtain that is drawn around the whole thing at the end of the funeral, when the casket is moved into the actual place where they burn it. That was one of the most upsetting things about my father-in-law's funeral, for me.

In Alabama, I guess they have so much rain and floods and things that instead of being buried, they had to have my aunt put in a mausoleum. I liked the idea of those when I was a kid, but the idea of people breaking into them creeps me out.

I quite like the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

Last year when my father bought a cemetary plot for himself and my mother he got the "family package" so to speak, so there is a place for me and my brother. So if I want to be buried I have a lovely spot on a hill in suburban NJ. But I've always thought of being creamated and had my ashes scattered over the ocean. I'm torn.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

I just want all my friends to get together and have plenty to eat and drink and maybe say a few nice things about me. But mainly be glad that they can still all get together and have a good time.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

Jackie, touchy! I don't suppose I meant you particularly, but, if we are being serious here and money was no object, I suppose I would have The Rolling Stones play Waiting on a Friend, make Mick Jagger give your bagpipe busker a job, and then retire as part of the goodbye gig contract.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

Jackie, what about touching your face?! I saw that recently.....

As usual, I din't mean for this to be morbid, etc. I'm actually kind of a cheery person, so I'm not sure why the gun/funeral questions this week.

Gwen, did you watch that tape? Someone actually had that played at their funeral last year. Everyone was laughing and having fun. That's a nice touch I think. Maybe I'll specify a dance. It's kinda like a wake with more action, right?

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

Ever seen a New Orleans-style street funeral with a Dixieland jazz band playing "O' wen de saints...go marchin' in..."? Well, that's my idea of a funeral. Except no burial. Cremation.Everybody get shitfaced. Then you can spade me into the tomatoes in the garden, or better yet, make a huge pan of brownies and put my ashes in the mix. And then give the brownies to my enemies so they can eat me. I been telling 'em to do that for years.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

Bubba, I love you for so many reasons...!

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

Yeah that Darlee Routier chick (uh, spelling her name phonetically)tried a "happy funeral" approach up here in Dallas a few years back and wooooo! did Public Opinion object to that!

I don't anything about that particular case except what I saw in the papers, but if I am murdered, I want my family to throw a very very sad funeral, for safety's sake.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2000

Bubba, you are so funny. Here in the US, you really eventually have to give it some thought, otherwise, everyone ends up getting screwed in the end if you don't have things planned out. I laughed at a friend from Iraq during grad. school. His idea was that a bunch of friends would come over and bury him in the back yard. We had to tell him it didn't work that way here, and if he didn't figure it out, his wife would get a $5000 funeral bill. I was raised to be buried, I'm afraid of fire- yea, yea, yea, so what, I'd be dead-but are you *sure*? I'll probably be cremated anyway thanks to my lawyer when I was writing my will. She looked at me, smiled and said, OK you prefer the worms. Besides, I like the philosophy of recirculating the food chain and I HATE caskets. At my dad's funeral, I had to walk behind it. Yuk, yuk. I'd want everyone to have fun. 'course it all depends on how and when you go. When I was 16, a friend was killed by a drunk driver. No one was in a very jovial mood. Especially since he had forshadowed his own death. We sang "Morning Has Broken". It was sad.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2000

I know a friend of Darlee Routier's niece's, and a year before that happened, we were at a party and the friend said to the niece, apropos of nothing, "Wouldn't it be weird if your aunt killed her kids?" True story. Also, I think the happy funeral was a little creepier in that case because she was under suspicion. And wasn't it a birthday party at the grave?

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2000

For me, a party is the way to go with everybody having a good time and saying how its too bad you had to miss this party. I've been to a lot of funerals/memorial services lately and I have been to a few that were really pretty fun and one that was even kooky, but it was for a really neat, realllly kooky lady, so it was appropriate. I lived in New Orleans for a while and have seen the funeral processions Bubba mentioned and they are really cool. Everything they do in N.O. is different than any other place I have ever been. I think it is more like a foreign country than any foreign country I have been to. I loved it there, but I finally had to move back to So. California so I could recover from my sleep deprivation. I don't think people ever sleep in New Orleans.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2000

I was born and raised in/near New Orleans, and you're right: they never stop. Literally, the place is one big party from October through April every year. Hell, even the funerals are parties. The city itself is unique and the culture is, too. I miss it, but I don't want to live there again. Well, maybe if I won the lottery and could just hang out all the time... :-)

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2000

All joking aside, Americans know so little about what to do when someone passes away. That's why we're so easily vicitmized by unscrupulous funeral homes. Did you know ther is no longer reason to embalm a body? I thought it was to preserve the body and prevent disease. But all it does is preserve the cardio-vascular system (veins and arteries, basically) and if the deceased wasn't contagious with something, there's little danger in say, washing and dressing your parent's or other loved ones' body. And those special air-tight caskets they hype and cost so much? Well, I just finished reading where, due to anerobic activity, they cause the corpse to explode. I ain't making this up. It's all news to me, too, but the report was writtne by an insider in the funeral business. Other cultures take care of their own dead in a loving way...we just farm 'em out, cause it's unpleasant to face, I guess. LisaD, don't ever do this again. First guns...now funerals. Are you up to something?

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2000

Anyone who wants to check into what I posted above can go to:

www.mausoleumproblems.homestead.com/index.html

and read the report to Congress and view the photos.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2000

Cool Bubba, except for sticking my hand in a dead turkey, (see Thanksgiving thread) I love gore. It runs in the family, my brother is an ER RN. For me however, dead, no big deal, live unhappy people, especially kids, it took me longer to disassociate from so I could do my job. Um, sorry this got a little tangential.

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000

Um, Bubba, I just visited the site you mentioned. I am leaning much more now towards cremation, unless someone wants to bother turning me into Lavender soap or a pretty candle :).

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000

In response to how much control traditional funeral homes have over the "industry", a few years ago a business called the "Simple Alternative" turned up here (it may be in the States too). They will bury you in a cardboard box if you want, (actually, I saw one instance where the grandchildren of the deceased drew on the box with crayons as part of their goodbye - it looked like a really long pizza box). About 20 years ago a book came out called "The American Way of Death", which exposed a lot of the crap that funeral directors pull. I think people are finally demanding more choices. I remember, about 15 years ago, that my grandmother had to arrange a funeral for her uncle, and since it was November, the undertaker (no other way to describe him) asked her for long underwear for the body. She told him he was nuts.

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000

Bubba, I don't know what's up with me lately! I'm usually so sweet! I just got blocked for a lap dancing question on another board, so it's definitely a trend this week. I hope I'm just being a freak for the holidays, and this isn't a permanent change.I'll think of some good flower arranging questions for my next post.

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000

Hey Gwenz...how about "Anerobic Exploding Corpses" as your next rock band? It DOES have a certain pizazz, huh?

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000

It's okay, I guess. I was already planning on "The Diaper Wipes", though.

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000

Lap dancing at a funeral, Lisa D.? Oh come on, now you've gone too far!

:-)

Hey, your band names remind me of the punk band I formed in college, "Nasty Milk Dregs." Or NMD, for short.

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000

I like "Three Chord Monty" myself. Preferably for a punk band. :)

"Kathleen Turner Overdrive", some local friends of mine, got namechecked in "High Fidelity" by Jack Black. That's a fun name. It's the same sort of idea that leads people to name their bands stuff like "Dandy Warhols" and "Brian Jonestown Massacre" et al, but it's still amusing.

The Dandies will be here tomorrow, I'm psyched.

I may die of excitement at the concert or something, and if I do, then I want to be cremated and I like white lilies. Thanks. Oh yes--to get my mother out of the house, she needs to go scatter them in about ten different places. I figure a European jaunt will do her some good and be distracting and so on...and all the money she'll save by just throwing me into a BBQ pit and turning it up to "high" will help defray the cost. Heh.

Oh wait. We have a "no bonfires within city limits" rule. Damn.

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2000

For serious? Cremation and then housed in one of those huge ashes- housing places with a little plaque and stuff. I would rather like to be cremated and then dug under in a garden, but if I die soon I want my kids to have somewhere to go to 'visit'. Is that creepy? I don't really know, but I found it comforting as a kid that my grandfather was always in the same place. If I die when my kids are grown-up than that won't matter so much.

I don't want a funeral that costs a whole load of cash and I don't want anything religious. I'd like a wake of sorts (without my body there -- not that it would bug me any, but might freak some people out a bit). I want people to have a chance to get together in someone's house and chat, have drinks if they'd like, eat food, and relax together. I like that way better than the dreaded 'visitation'. I don't think people talk very openly at funeral homes. I also think it makes people nervous of laughter or regular-level talking so I'd want people to gather where they could really talk. I think it helps people to deal with death.

I read in a Marian Engel novel where after the death of one of the characters the grown children in the family used the man's old printing press to print flyers of his favourite poem. Then they went out into the city and stapled them everywhere [that one would normally see flyers]. I thought that was very cool and I'd adore that, but I think it would have to be spontaneous to 'count' and not the sort of thing I could write into a will.

-- Anonymous, November 18, 2000