When I looked at the body, I couldn't help to believe there to be a God.  It's not that I felt necessary pity for the fellow, since everyone dies, but that, looking at him, there felt something to be absent.  This was not him.  Before me was merely a large hunk of flesh, appearing limp, as might be a glove tossed on a table.  The hand that wore the glove was gone.  The spirit that filled up the body like a balloon was no more, or at the very least, elsewhere.  In Latin, the word for "spirit" is "animus", and it's also the word for "breath".  Looking at the body lying in the casket, I couldn't help but to think how beautiful a thought that is.  The breath of life fills us all.  And more: "God breathed life into Adam." 

I hate funeral homes.  Olinger especially.  Like I hate for-profit hospitals like Kaiser.  There just seems something wrong with purposefully making as much profit as you can from a person's pain, suffering and death.  But it's a marvellously good business, and probably maybe they've even got an arrangement together.  Some black suited representative from Olinger probably visits some sharp, blue smocked manager slash doctor at the local Kaiser and says, "Hey Johnny, have I got a deal for you!  How about you bag, we bury 'em, and if you keep the body count up I'll cut you in?"  That is modern American capitalism at its finest. 

The funeral home was so sterile, like a Baptist Church.  Only one subtle icon of religion, a dove, hung over the door frame into the viewing room, which was lined with imitation wood pews, not that they were imitation wood, but rather imitation pews.  And the dove appeared afraid of offending someone, the dead perhaps.  The whole place was a mockery.  Its smooth lines and acute angles were a mockery of the richness and fullness of life.  Its wide open windows hid any solemnity and peace, any real memoriam.  It's sign, painted on the exit door, "Doors must remain unlocked during business hours" said it all.  This was a place of business.  It was not a place for a real celebration or honor of life.  And it left me sadder than the feeling I got from watching my coworkers cry, and from watchin gthe wife of the departed to stand strong and to comfort everyone else, even though you could tell she was almost empty of strength herself.

When I die, I don't want to be some place like that.  Some place impersonal, and in a rich mahogany casket.  No thank you.  Give me some slabs of balso wood and my local church any day.  Or if not a church, than the mountains, which are God's way of reminding us that we really can do nothing great by ourselves. 

The preacher, a pastor at the deceased's non-denom church, went on about his faith and about Jesus and yadda yadda.  It was hard to pay attention.  I constantly alternated between drifting towards sleep and looking at the lifeless body that was missing my friend's breath of life.  I could only think how beautiful Catholic funerals were and how this was clearly not a Catholic funeral.  Maybe when I died, I could have an orchestra playing Mozart's Requiem Mass.  "Requiem aeterna... et lux perpetua!"   

And then I'd snap out of it.  Why the hell was I thinking about my own funeral at someone else's funeral?  Shouldn't I be thinking about memories of him?  And while everyone milled around, waiting for the casket to be moved to the grave, I couldn't help but looking at some of the women.  Naturally, of course, being the pig that I am.  And then thinking how much funerals are a bunch like weddings.  No matter how much you think you know the guy or couple, there always turn up to be loads of people you've never met.  Except at weddings you can always chat up a girl, since they're all emotional about not getting married.  At funerals, it seems to me picking up a girl would be a bit harder. 

Thunk!  I hit my forehead.  Focus man.  On the task.  On remembering you friend and coworker.  On you're laughs and frustrations.  Not... on... her... gwa! 

Questions:
How do you want your funeral?
How do you want to be remembered?
How do you want to die?

My death will be brutal and gorey, like I mentioned below.  Either I'll get in a motorcycle accident, fall off a mountain, or get decapitated by some terrorist kidnappers for believing in the goodness and decency of humanity.  In all but the latter case, I want a closed casket funeral.  In the latter case, open casket with my head in my hands, smiling.

And my funeral?  Like this song by Great Big Sea: