I was reading an article in O magazine this afternoon about writing memoir. There were eight examples of short memoir-type stories in the magazine and I immediately realized that they were all themed. My life with dogs, my life with the Black Experience, my life with embarrassment, my life with my inability to sort out memory from imagination ...
I think I could write a memoir of death. The times I've dreamt of dying. The times I've dreamt of my funeral. The times I've dreamt of other people dying. Real people who did die and the funerals I attended.
The list would be incomplete without the story of my son, Michael, officiating at a funeral for a hamster. The hamster was carefully wrapped in tissues and placed in an empty checks box. Tucker picked several dandelions which lay wilting on the little coffin. The three of us stood there in a semi-circle.
Michael opened the service with the Pledge of Allegiance. He then segued smoothly into what he could remember of the Our Father, and he ended with "And for this food which we are about to eat, we offer our thanks..." The box was then scraped off the island of the kitchen into the garbage. That appeared to be the end of it all, the kids went on about their business.
Tucker used to conduct funerals for the people who tried to ride his bus. I'd bought him a Little People school bus with blobby little people who all looked alike except for the color of their clothes and the occasional addition of a ball cap. He would load the bus, careen it wildly through the kitchen until it tipped up on two wheels and then it would slowly roll over. And over. In the end, all the Little People who were thrown clear were pronounced dead at the scene.
Sometimes there wouldn't be anyone thrown out and that called for the use of the toy ambulance to transport the unluckiest ones who would then be pronounced dead at the hospital. Tucker liked the part of informing the family ... "There might have been more we could have done, but the Dr. was really busy today and couldn't come in."
And then he would conduct the final services for the dearly departed. He was about 5 years old when this was his favorite way to play. I was never so glad when he grew out of it.
There are few things in our culture which fascinate us and from which we are any more removed than death. Most people have the good manners to die in hospitals and/or on someone else's watch so by the time we get involved they've been all cleaned up and made to look "natural." And ain't that the weirdest thing. Dead people should not look as though they are dressed up and waiting on their date but just happened to fall asleep in a box. They should look dead.
I know that not everyone will agree with me, but I'm convinced that I'd have fewer nightmares about "dead" people waking in their coffins wondering why they overslept the alarm if we'd just let them look like what they are. Gone.
I'm also in favor of more "do it yourself" funeral programmes. How many of us have been to a funeral where the officiating minister called the dearly departed by the wrong name? The first time I remember being aware of that happening was when I was 25 and attended the funeral of my high school friend, Belinda. The minister called her "Melissa" through the whole thing. Which alternately horrified me and gave me the surreal sensation of having wandered into the wrong nightmare.
Or maybe the minister says something which reveals an utter lack of knowledge of the person's life and character. As at my Granny's funeral when the guy actually said, "Dear Mary (okay, yeah, her name WAS Mary, but NO ONE called her that. Even those of us who didn't call her Granny, referred to her by her preferred name of Annie) was a sweet quiet woman who never spoke an ill word of her neighbors."
My Granny was the hub of all gossip in her little community for at least the last 78 years of her 87 year long life. She started her career when she was a child on the school bus and took it to hitherto unscaled heights based on her powers of observation, eavesdropping, and innuendo.. I'm pretty sure that her match will never be again and she would have been appalled that at her funeral she received no credit for her work.
An appropriate funeral programme might have been better conducted by the friends and family who loved her dearly, were entertained by her antics, and who would miss her the most. We'd have gotten her name right and given credit where it was due. Let the minister stand at the door and hand out tissues.
I've been looking around at the memoirs on the shelves this summer. Between Augusten Burroughs' "Wolf at the Table" and David Sedaris', "When you are engulfed in flames". I'm noticing a trend toward the macabre. There's one entitled, "The Thing about Life is that One Day You'll Be Dead" which contains the cheery lines "After you turn 7, your risk of dying doubles every eight years... By your 80s, you "no longer even have a distinctive odor ... You're vanishing."
I think I'm on to something here. People aren't just weird, they have a sick fascination with death and true death stories. I'll bet I could tell a few.
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