Putting The Fun In Funeral: It’s Time You Started Planning Your Funeral
I was always told little girls plan their eventual weddings, daydreaming of dresses, bouquets and cake. That was never true of me, except for the cake part. Since I was a wee’un, I’ve always wondered what my funeral will look, sound, and feel like. Not in a morbid way, contrary to common presumptions, which are usually followed by shocked gasps from someone who stage whispers, ‘Don’t talk about that!’ across the dinner table.
For me, it’s hard to believe that most people don’t idly contemplate their send off. Who will be there? What music will be played? What will the guests get to eat? We’ve already established my answer to that last one, but I’m voraciously curious to know the unspoken plans other people ponder for their memorial service. And I’m not alone.
In 1999, Californian lawyer Stephanie West Allen registered October 30th as Create A Great Funeral Day in the annual American publication Chase’s Calendar of Events. Initially met with resistance, particularly from professional funeral directors, the “holiday” aims to dispel the (Western) taboo of discussing death, funerals, and what — if anything — follows.
While the date’s proximity to Halloween is no coincidence, Stephanie doesn’t see funeral planning as sinister or macabre. Rather, it’s a gift, not just to your loved ones after you’ve passed, but also to yourself while you’re kicking around. In Creating Your Own Funeral or Memorial Service: A Workbook, Stephanie provides a step-by-step guide to planning your last dance, regardless of your age, health or religious inclinations.
As a devout atheist, I’ve wondered if it’s at odds for me to be preoccupied with interment politics, which are frequently linked to religious traditions. Irrespective of your faith (or lack thereof), Stephanie sees funerals as the ultimate expression of your personal values. Planning how to communicate what you stand for during your final rite of passage can have a profound effect on the way you live your life in the meantime.
In this era of tabloid sensationalism, unsolicited dick pics, and four Sharknado films (to date), it’s reasonable to feel like your moral compass may have taken a beating. To uncover your core values, Stephanie suggests this enlightening card-sort exercise, in which you place 83 ideals — from ‘acceptance’ to ‘world peace’ — into piles marked ‘not important’, ‘important’ and ‘very important’.
Values like humour, hope and honesty rank highly for me, and I hope these transpire at my funeral, preferably in the form of cupcakes and puppy hugs. Knowledge and ecology are also critical to me, so I’m a card-carrying organ donor, intrigued by the idea of natural burials. That said, it’s equally enticing to imagine my ashes being shot into space, or pressed into a vinyl record. In the literal end, it’s neat to think the possibilities are endless.
Up until 2013, I’d only been to a handful of funerals, mostly for distant and/or elderly relatives I had no real emotional connection with. When my beloved Grandad Jack passed away, that changed overnight. Bereft of the patriarch who (barely) kept our family together, already strained relations were exacerbated by grief, anger, illness, and an especially stressful episode of baby boomers trying to digitise a cassette tape of apparently very rare show tunes.
Me and my Grandad after I’d just made him a picnic (hence the old towel and masking tape)
At the funeral, a minister read bible passages that would have triggered my staunchly secular grandad, whose surname ‘Kittel’ — fun fact — actually denotes a Jewish burial robe. Maybe that explains my hardwired mortality salience, which compels me to lock down my very specific funeral playlist needs. Maybe I’m an egocentric Taurean control freak who can’t handle the idea of a cookie-cutter goodbye. Or maybe I just want to make a trying time that bit easier for whomever I may leave behind. Hey, I own my narcissism, and feel okay saying that I’d like my funeral to be a celebration.
We plan so many other momentous milestones in life: weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, bat mitzvahs, what-have-ya. This year on Sunday 30 October, take the first step toward creating a great goodbye. Tell your friends and family how you’d like to eventually be memorialised, and ask them if they want to share their secret funeral fantasies with you. Consider what values you stand for, and embody them ’til you shuffle, crawl or roller skate off this mortal coil and into whatever comes next (imho: 100% nothing).
Until then, let’s feel fine putting the ‘fun’ in funeral.
This article by Aimee Knight was originally published on The Vocal.
