Funerals

I can't stand funerals.

If I can at all avoid them, I do. Even if the dearly departed was close. It's not like they're gonna be offended, is it?

No, they've gone to wherever it is you go when you kick the bucket.

Had a Soc prof at U of G back in the day who'd created a bit of a stir with a book about the afterlife. It was a bestseller! It was such a bestseller that his publisher signed him up to a multi-book contract.

His thesis was that you never die. Ya, everybody wants to hear that, eh?! According to him, your "essence" just gets recycled. You come back! Maybe as a worm, maybe as a dog or cat, maybe as a more refined humanoid!

Or maybe not.

A couple of years later I enquired of another U of G prof, whatever happened to Buddy with the best-seller? Turns out the sequel had been a bit of a disappointment sales wise, and Buddy with the best-seller, having pissed away the advance on his multi-book contract, decided to check out early.

After all, in his mind, he wasn't actually going to die.

Not sure how that's worked out for him.

Not sure how it'll work out for me either, that death thing...

You always feel things are a bit askew when you're going to funerals for people younger than you. You go through this thing where you wonder why they're dead and you're not. Sometimes it's obvious, as in when those four young guys of my acquaintance had a few drinks and then raced their five hundred horsepower Camaro to a level crossing trying to beat a train.

If they'd had six hundred horsepower they might have made it.

But sometimes it's not so obvious. Today I paid last respects to somebody who did everything right. Never smoked, never did drugs, drank in moderation, exercised her heart out, never raced trains to level crossings, and was, by all accounts, and certainly in my personal experience, an all-round decent human being.

She's gone, but I'm still here... makes no sense to me.


But it's not up to me to question God's master plan.