Funereal Concerns

I've been attending more and more funerals since I retired from teaching five years ago. They all look pretty much alike. More often than not the service starts with a friend of the family in possession of a good voice or the ability to play a musical instrument offering an introductory musical piece as the mourners file into the sanctuary. That same musician will reappear periodically to offer some relief from the eulogies, remembrances, readings of the 23rd Psalm, and if the deceased was of a literary bent, the passages from Shakespeare, all offered, we are constantly reminded, by way of celebration of a life well lived. Toward the end of the service, the same musicians, or sometimes a new talent, will offer a moving rendition of "Wind Beneath My Wings," after which the mourners will all be directed to a room in the basement of the church where refreshments will be served, presumably to the accompanyment of spirited story telling. Then we all go away somehow renewed and determined to tell people we don't see as often as we should how much we love and appreciate them.

All of this has me worried about my own funeral, especially the part where members of the congregation are invited to grab a microphone and share memories of the deceased. I've noticed that most of these memories tend to be designed to make us laugh at all of the funny and unusual things the deceased did during his or her life.

I remember Frank Phelp's funeral less than a year after his retirement. Frank was my supervising teaching when I student taught. He was also Katherine's the following year. We taught with him at Green Mountain toward the end of his career and I remember the joy he had thinking about his loaded up Winnebago and all the places he and his lovely wife would travel during their golden years. That all ended all too abruptly and the church was filled with students, friends, and colleagues mad and confused about a life cut short. But then we were asked to share and laugh and celebrate.

I have to say that celebration was the furthest thing from my mind, but laugh I did when one of Frank's friends, another colleague, got up to share a couple of Frank anecdotes. The first one was designed to show Frank's prefessionalism as a teacher and it was related to us how on those occasions when Frank was burdened down by papers to grade (Frank's least favorite thing to do, I might add) he would call in sick and spend the day at home grading. Wow, what a guy. I remember exchanging shocked glances with every other English teacher in the church over that amusing anecdote. The second one was a real knee slapper. I think I can even quote it.

"I remember one time our two families were going to hang out at the lake and Frank opened the back of his car and pulled out a Weber Grill and started making hamburgers and hot dogs right there on the beach. There are hundreds of stories like that."

Well, I always suspected that Frank was something of madman, but I never fully realized to what extent until I heard the grilling at the beach story.

You see, I'm worried that no one will have any equally hilarious stories about me at my funeral. Although I do have two Webers, it has never occured to me to take either one of them to the beach. And my dawn to dusk grading frenzies on Saturdays and Sundays are pretty standard teaching stories, nothing to make people laugh uproariously at my idiosyncratic behavior.

In fact, the only funny story teller at my funeral would probably be my sister, Jeri:

"I remember one day up in Estes Park when Jimmy was twelve, I got so mad at something he said that I started chasing him around the kitchen with a butcher knife. He ran into my room, grabbed my pet turtle, ran down to Lake Estes, and skipped him across the lake! There are just hundreds of fun moments like that."

Not exactly the kind of stuff to set the table on a roar. Any laughter coming from that anecdote might sound a little uncomfortable.

Christian will end up telling the good one about how we were sitting in the living room once watching a news feature about this blind man who coached Pop Warner football. They showed film of the blind guy tackling and generally messing around with his young charges. "I bet he'd be easy to fake out," I commented. Chris cracked up for a long time over that one. But again, I'm not sure that is an appropriate anecdote for a funeral.

All of my kids could make fun of me for dogmatically making proclamations that I invariably break.

"I'll be damned if we get a VCR. We don't need one. Instead of watching stupid movies we should be reading."

"Microwaves are works of the devil and should be banned."

"We don't need a new, big screen television. We are getting along just fine with the one that we have."

It should be of no surprise that we probably have one of the world's largest collections of video tapes and discs; our microwave gets constant use (how else can you make popcorn?); and we have a 60 inch plasma screen Panasonic. I, of course, see no contradiction there, but there are probably some malcontents who do.

See what I mean. There just aren't enough good stories to enliven a respectable funeral. On the other hand, my kids all have impressive connections with the entertainment world and will undoubtedly offer a great arrangement of "Wind Beneath My Wings."