I've attended way too many funerals in my life and I've just about seen it all. Simple family goodbyes to the absolute travesty the little homosexual prick of a minister made of my wife's father's funeral. Trust me, I'm highly in favor of a small affair and mostly family and NO preacher. Hey, the person is dead and no amount of preaching is going to make any difference then. Say goodbye, get over it and move on.
My wife, in fact, does not even want what one could term a funeral. She wants a very short graveside service and that is it. Me, I think I want a funeral. Just not what one might call conventional. I don't want to be buried so no graveside service. I'm going to be burned to little, white ashes and bone fragments and stuck in an urn. After that you can dump me in a ditch beside the road for all it will mean. The body, or it's remains, are nothing at all. The mind, the soul and the heart (metaphorically speaking of course) are the person. The body, once it has ceased functioning, is just so much wasted space and no need worrying overly much about it.
What I think I want, though, is music. There is so much music I love and "identify" with I could plan a funeral week of nothing but music. That would be rather an imposition though, don't you think? So, I'm trying to come up with about thirty minutes or so of the "best" music of my life. Those songs that just have a special meaning to me. Some about me, some about others, some I just like that have no special meaning at all. Wish I could be around to hear everyone trying to guess which on was which and who it might refer too.
There are some I almost feel HAVE to be included. Bob Seger "Against the Wind". Kansas "Dust in the Wind". The Who "Behind Blue Eyes". Black Sabbath "Paranoid". TG Sheppard "I Loved Them Every One". But there are so very many more that mean a lot to me. Michael Bolton "Missing You Now", Peabo Bryson "Can You Stop the Rain", Tony Rich "Nobody Knows it but Me". Then there are others on a different note like Alice Cooper "Poision" and "Love's a Loaded Gun". Nazereth "Love Hurts". And damned near any Gary Stewart song. A guy I went to high school with in Lousia Ky, Mr Keith Whitley "I'm No Stranger to the Rain", "Miami, My Amie", "Til Each Tear You Cry Becomes a Rose". Garth Brooks "What She's Doing Now". Alabama "Love in the First Degree". Simon and Gafunkel "I Am a Rock", "Sounds of Silence", "Kathy's Song". So many more I cannot even think of them all.
Words of one kind or another, written and read or written and sung, are such a great importance to me and my life. Well, when you're dead you can't control anything. Least of all the words someone chooses to speak at a ~memorial service~. I find that kind of laughable because in this world there are not a handful of people who actually know/knew me. Now, there are people who think they do but that is not possible because for most of my life I have not even known myself. Some days I still don't. Family tradition there I guess. :-)
If I never get around to putting together a "play list" to subject people to instead of someone who never knew me standing over my corpse and pronouncing judgement on me I'd rather just not have any ceremony at all. Pointless really. Changes nothing.
Pretty melancholy today, huh? LOL. Well, welcome to my world.
I saved this song list. I hope I don't have to use it for many many more years, but I saved it. I plan to listen to each song myself, now, while you are alive for it to matter. Some of them, I know. I used to listen to your Tony Rich CD on repeat.
ReplyDeleteLove you!
PS I thought I was supposed to be spreading your ashes through the creek beds back home?