Short of audibly relieving the pressure of a lunch heavy on beans, nothing can paralyze conversation like mentioning the word Death.
Smiles, plastic and otherwise freeze. Loud voices taper off into loud silences. Heads turn towards the person who uttered the sacrilegious word.
Death.
To most people, death is something that happens to other people. 99.99% you participate in the event of death as an observer. It is just once that you participate as the actual deceased.
Generally you will receive news over the phone of that fool James who after acquainting himself well with two gentlemen , one known as Jack Daniels and the other Johnny Walker, proceeded to drive himself home, and while on the highway noticed with amazement that Raila Odinga had indeed done his bypasses after all and Uhuru Highway was not a 3 lane highway but a 12 way highway.
Naturally being of the adventurous kind, James elected to take the outermost of the new lanes and five hours later the combined efforts of the police, firemen, the army, industrial grease and an assortment of levers they are able to unwrap James’ car from the lamppost it had so warmly embraced and unwrap James from the innards of his car and assemble his bits and pieces for transport to the mortuary.
James would then be laid on his back, hands across his chest and relatives, friends, new relatives and new friends would file silently past, clapping handkerchiefs to their eyes in their grief.
At the funeral itself James would be tearfully described as a good man and the salt of the earth. You and your bewildered colleagues who knew that rat as well as anyone listen in amazement at the glowing tributes from people who just last week drew parallels between James and certain farm animals, with James coming off worse.
The local priest who just the day before yesterday in a moment of weakness described James as “a pest, a wastrel and a colossal stain on the face of humanity” delivers a moving sermon that compares James with the lions lying down with the lambs, leaving the latter looking like an episode of the exorcist.
We surreptitiously consult our programs and reassure ourselves that we are at the right funeral and that the right person is being buried.
After James has been lowered into the ground and the grave is covered with soil, more than one person stamps firmly on the grave to make sure that the ass is really buried and will not pull any of that crawling out of the grave nonsense.
The toast to James’ departed spirit is particularly enthusiastic.
But I digress. Most people do not like to think of death any further than that. One’s mortality is apparently a taboo issue with most of us. The last time I raised the topic I became extremely unpopular.
The thought of being put into a suit slit down the back and having cotton stuffed up your nose is not a welcome one. Being lowered into the earth is still less welcome, as is the funeral atmosphere.
What most of us fail to realize is that the funeral is not for you. Once your heart monitor flat lines or the car you are speeding in telescopes into a round plate your earthly business is completed. It does not matter to you whether you are laid in state or tossed into a nearby dump.
But it does to your nearest and dearest, because they have to say goodbye to you in some way or the other. Hence the funeral. Depths will be trawled to find something good to say about you, no matter how far back it was. Even that time when you pulled down little George’s pants before the screamingly amused girls at the kindergarten, consigning him to a life of self doubt, indecision and ultimately drink will be told as a tribute to your wit.
Death in itself is not a bad thing. It is the gate between the here and there hereafter, and thus it is perfectly in order to say that life is the process of death, a preparation, as it were, for the everafter. Ergo it is not something depressingly creepy!
Compared to eternity, a billion billion years is negligible at best, and if that is the case a miserable 70 plus years of existence has some work to do in order to qualify as a scratch on the surface. Which is not to say that they are meaningless. Au contraire! The fact that those years determine whether you end up playing a harp and flying around or dancing on hot coals and nursing burns to nether regions for an eternity is testament to the importance of those years!
I’m no angel, and my failures number almost as many as my successes but I dare say I’ll make it to Heaven. My robe will be smouldering and smoke will be emanating from the said robe but I dare say I’ll make it. Saint Peter will give me a millennium of heart attacks as he looks at me then looks through Volumes I through Volume MMMMMMMMMC of the book of life and then finds my name as the last appendix to the last book as foolscap attached with masking tape.
That would be a very happy occasion, and I would like the same to be reflected on the earth end. Which is why if I catch you in a black suit or a black dress and black veil at my sending off ceremony you have better be prepared of a lifetime of strange noises in your rafters and things moving mysteriously around you.
There will be none of that filing past the body nonsense. This is just needlessly depressing. The goofiest photos of me in existence will be found from the corners of the globe they are (especially the ones from a certain dare involving certain attire), enlarged and hung up.
There will be no singing depressing hymns, oh no, none of that! In fact, there will be a provision in my will for an excellent gift for anyone who can get the crowd on their feet.
I don’t want to be mourned, I want to be fondly remembered.
But that’s just me.
AOB
Dudes and dudettes, CHANGE YOUR BLOGROLL LINK TO ME!
Toto – Africa