I suppose this should come with a trigger warning – I’m about to discuss the possibility that people might die. Stop reading now if you think it’ll all be too much. I am quite blasé about such things, though, and am happy to talk about them. Which might explain why people get a wary look in their eyes if they see the conversation might be edging in that direction, then quickly make their excuses and leave.
My view is that it’s better to sort all this out when you’re fit and capable because you’ll be doing your family a favour in the long term. They might be a little squeamish about discussing these things, but it’s kinder now than later, or not at all. My family is (un)surprisingly not in the least squeamish. Which is just as well because I’ve recently told them that I have paid for my funeral. When I say I’ve paid for my funeral, that’s not really true. I’ve paid for a direct cremation because I hate funerals. Proceed directly to the wake, I say.
I was talking to my son about these matters. ‘What about the ashes?’ he wanted to know. ‘Don’t collect them at all if you don’t want them,’ I replied. I still have my parents’ ashes and I don’t know what on earth to do with them. I am slowly developing a plan – maybe a few in our garden, a sprinkling of my mother’s in St James’s Park in London because it was a place she loved in a city she adored, and then the rest back to the peaceful grounds at the crematorium. ‘Wouldn’t you like to be in St James’s Park too?’ my son asked. Well, I do love London and it might be nice to join my mother…
Then I mentioned someone who had distributed his wife’s ashes into little bags and was taking some with him wherever he travelled so she could be sprinkled across the globe. She loved to travel and he still does. We started to wonder about the legality of transporting human remains around the world. ‘They’re not really human remains,’ my son pointed out. ‘You’re not exactly taking a femur to Lima or a thigh to Shanghai.’ Much hilarity ensued while we thought of all the bones and where you might take them.
Then we started discussing a friend who’s attending a funeral where the deceased wrote his own eulogy. Who better qualified? Which led to a discussion of what a wake should entail, other than the obvious food and drink. I’m a great believer in a well-chosen canapé. We were laughing about making up your own playlist in advance, but then decided it might be a good idea after all. Possibly my favourite piece of music is Allegri’s Miserere, but that would bring the vibe down, so maybe I should veer towards songs like Elbow’s gorgeous One Day Like This or Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run to really rev things up. Quite a niche activity, making a playlist for your own wake, but it does make me smile. Which made me think of Cockney Rebel’s Make Me Smile and Lily Allen’s Smile. So many possibilities.
All in all, quite a good discussion, I thought. As I said, not squeamish at all.