If I were to drop dead tomorrow, or anytime in the next five years, here’s my funeral plan:
A deadpan German gentleman steps up to the pulpit. He reads selected excerpts from Voltaire, Camus, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky for twenty minutes in English in his deep basso voice. The audience applaud.
A PowerPoint presentation, announced by the comedian Simon Evans, compiling the various misadventures of my life in a series of slides: photos, animations, drawings. Beginning with my persistent bawling as a baby, through my days as a blonde preschooler, to my athletic early childhood, my days as a teenage depressive and onto university and my final role as a cashless artist. Includes scathing remarks about my character with special attention to my inability to adapt to change or assimilate into new groups.
Some music as my coffin is carried down the aisle. Something classical to preserve my dignity, perhaps a light acoustic instrumental.
The priest, played by Alan Arkin, delivers a heartfelt tribute to my qualities as a wit, writer and raconteur. He then quips that he mixed up eulogies and says I was nowhere near as good as the other geezer! The audience laughs heartily: they have to agree, really.
A four-hour bellydancing extravaganza!
My coffin is then carried, by one small boy, to the graveyard. The German gentleman reads selected passages from Beckett, with emphasis on Malone Dies, in the gravest tones. No one is allowed to leave or sit during the readings. My grave is then filled in with sweeties.
Light refreshments from a nearby lemonade stand. Lemonades cost £2 each—all money goes to the vendor for his hard work. As people leave the church, the sound of me bawling as a baby is played over enormous speakers, serving as a fitting epitaph for my entire life.
When I die, I want to be cremated. And then the ashes scattered to the winds.
ReplyDeleteMake sure your family scatter it in the right direction, you might end up in your auntie's nostrils.
ReplyDeleteDoes the plan get revised in five years?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I pity the small boy, but the rest sounds cool.
xo B
Yes. Hopefully I won't die between now and then, otherwise I might look like a (dead) idiot.
ReplyDeleteI applaud every detail of this except the part about you being dead.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I have no other requirements than Chopin's Funeral March.
Noted. I'll bury you in Cardiff, in that case. In a pink coffin.
ReplyDeleteHey MJ, just in case you don't pop your clogs soon, have a Liebster nomination http://theurbanmisanthropist.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/the-world-is-your-liebster/
ReplyDeleteYou're making a small boy carry your coffin? They must have either sawed you in half first or cremated you ;)
ReplyDeleteThat is some plan you have there, M.J. But I think it is not to put a little lightness to the occasion. It will serve as a reminder that you lived a very interesting life, and you want to keep it that way up to the end.
ReplyDelete