funeral

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so.

I love you best, and I'll miss you forever.

It was like a bomb had just gone off in the kitchen, and instead of cleaning up the rubble, people were stepping around it and eating mini-quiche.

The shovel worked in and out of the light beams as the dirt hit him in the stomach, on his back, fell into his ears, his eyes, as I covered him along with the things that had made him: his walks, his rest, his eating when hungry, the stars he watched sometimes, the first day I brought him home, the first time he saw snow, and every second of his friendship, what he took with him into silence and stillness ...

_Do you think there__ somewhere else, some other place to go after this one?_ Mandy blurted out.__ou mean when you die, where will you end up?_ Alecto asked her. __I wouldn__ know_ back to whatever void there is, I suppose._____e thought about it_ every living thing dies alone, it__l be lonely after death,_ Mandy sighed sadly. __hat freaks me out, does it scare you?___ don't want to be alone,_ Alecto replied wearily. __e won__ be, though. We__l be dead, so we__l just be darkness, not much else, just memories, nostalgia and darkness.___ don__ want to be any of that either though,_ Mandy exclaimed, bursting into tears and crying, keeping her eyes to the floor, her voice shaky as she spoke to him. __hen we die, we__l still be nothing, the world will still be nothing, everything__l just be nothing!___ou__e real though, at least that__ something,_ Alecto pointed out, holding his hand out in front of her. Smiling miserably, Mandy took his hand in her own and sat there beside him quietly.

Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral.

The only thing I can recall is that it rained all day and all night, and that when I asked my father whether heaven was crying, he couldn't bring himself to reply. Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not yet learned to stifle with words.

I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others.

Whether you lay cold in the ground or warm in an urn the turmoils of life aren't a concern. For some this may be the perfect rhyme except for those you leave behind...

My life will end someday, but it will end at my convenience.

Funerals aren't for the dead. They're for the living.

Directing a funeral isn__ about death at all. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.

And on a cold Sunday afternoon, he was joined in his home by a small group of friends and family for a 'living funeral'. Each of them spoke and paid tribute.. Some cried. Some laughed. One woman read a poem: 'My dear and loving cousin.. Your ageless heart as you ,love through time, layer on layer, tender sequoia..' .. And all the heartfelt things we never get to say to those we love, Morrie said that day.

I have drunk the night and swallowed the stars. I am dancing with abandon and singing with rapture. There is not a thing I do not love. There is not a person I have not forgiven. I feel a universe of love. I feel a universe of light. Tonight, I am with old friends and we are returning home. The moon is our witness.

The endWhen I die bang on cansRomp around in leaps and boundsLet whips crack in the airCall in clowns and acrobats!I want my coffin to go on a donkeyDecked out in Andalusian styleYou can't refuse anything to a dead manAnd I want, by all means, go on a donkey

How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?

Maybe when we face a tragedy, someone, somewhere is preventing a bigger tragedy from happening.

He took a deep breath in, still managing himself as if he were resisting temptation. He was a soldier, his father was in the service, too. Crying wasn't something Morell men did. They just didn't. He hadn't cried at Robbie Morell's funeral.So he wasn't going to now.