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Notes -
... am I the only one satisfied with threescore and ten?
I have no plans, and I'm hopefully young enough that I won't have to make serious plans any time soon, ojalá.
But I would very much like a traditional church funeral, where everyone dresses up, wears black, they play sad songs on an organ, and a traditional sermon is preached. It'd be nice if something was said about what I left behind in the world, but I would prefer if the focus of the funeral is not on myself but on the transcendent values I believed in during my life. I have never had a particularly intense fear of death, but I do very much fear the death of my ideas, my worldview, my way of life, my values. I would consider it the most meaningful celebration of my life if the focus were not on me, but on God.
I realize that sounds rather entitled, but my perspective is that very strict, formal funeral rites make clear the gravity of what's happened and provide order and familiarity to the horribleness of death. What I want for my family and friends is a participation in that, as well as a reflection of my values.
I have the same beliefs about weddings -- I think a big problem with Western culture is how flippantly and casually we treat everything, how businesswear has been eroded and even at funerals and weddings people don't put on their Sunday best. We apply the same flippant attitude to people dying and people making a solemn promise of commitment to each other -- is it really any wonder that people just go "bury me in a ditch," or don't get married? Where's the meaning and significance?
I want my funeral to be a funeral, and my wedding to be a wedding. These are not times for creativity and individuality, they're life scripts -- often literally scripted -- and the point is that it's not just random people doing random things, but the participation of particular people in a larger whole, a solemnization of something that many have gone through before and will go through in the future. You're not alone.
There's something about major services in our culture that's so empty, so lonely, so disconnected, that even at the times we are most vulnerable, dead or grieving, engaged and married, there's nothing to actually hold us up other than our own thoughts, our grief at a funeral or our hand-written cringey vows at a wedding. Big, important, meaningful things are happening, and instead of supporting people with the weight of a thousand years of tradition, we tell mourners or the betrothed to fly, bitch. I don't want that for either my wedding or my funeral.
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