The Funeral

I was never very religious.

I don’t suppose many would care, but many would and anyway it explains my reaction to the events that follow.

I never thought much on my death. Or no, I suppose I did. They say no one ever thinks of dying but that’s a lie. Everyone does. All the time. Usually every day. Because inwardly, innately we are all aware of one fact: From the moment we are born and expelled from our mother’s womb foamy and dripping with blood and glop and excess bits of flesh, from that moment, we begin to die. Each breath we take from that moment is another breath closer to our imminent demise. And we are, as a whole, aware of this. Surely there are exceptions as there always is, but in the vast majority we know this one forever truth, forever fact: We all will die.

So I suppose I did think much on my death. Or at least as much as anyone else does. But I never considered the funeral. At least not much more than in that abstract way of “someday I will die, and there will possibly be a wake (unless my death happens to be terribly gruesome and no one wants to see my face or body smushed or swollen like an allergenic pus-like balloon), some flowers, and a grave”.

So my not being very religious never came to mind when I considered my death. I vaguely thought there would be a wake, some flowers, and a grave. Even though I would prefer a party, with a piñata, and alcohol, and candy, and fireworks.

If you think of the funerals you’ve been too, you might recall there’s someone there, generally a priest, or some member of the clergy, or something, to say words about the dead, soon-to-be rotting, hunk of flesh (and copious amounts of some kind of jelly formaldehydic fluid sloshing around in there that makes that flesh’s flesh look less like flesh and more like a child’s horrible stretched first attempt at play-doh-ing a person).

If you can’t tell already, I don’t think much on funerals. I’m usually the one sitting in the uncomfortable chairs while the clergy person pretends to talk as if they know the person in the casket (which they often don’t), wondering exactly why our society goes around displaying a gross facsimile of the person you used to know, while people that probably don’t mourn them as much as they should, and barely even know said dead-person, cry, and cry some more, and maybe some more, so when people look at them they’ll only see the snot, and tears, and think “oh they must miss that person a lot”, and not think “they’re barely an acquaintance and they’re crying this much, I think they must just like drama and crying and other people hugging them to make them feel better, sick bastards”. These are usually the same practically strangers who look at me and my stoicness and think I’m a freak when usually I’m either suffering silently, or yeah, you know what? I quite honestly don’t give a shit and don’t feel like pretending just so people feel bad for me.

I think in the end, the better thing to do would be to have a good drink (or something suitably nice if you’re not into alcohol), have some cake and shoot off some fireworks (there are even people who will put ashes in fireworks and I think it’s a terribly practical way of disposing of the remains and a helluva lot more memorable than leaving a gravestone that no one will visit after at the most 70 years or so... also, it’s pretty).

So I never thought of these things, really, in terms of my death. To be honest, the most I figured was a wake for the immediate family, turned to ashes, and possibly sprinkled somewhere cool, like Wales, or like I said, fireworks. Pretty similar to how my mum always said she wanted to go.

Unfortunately when you die at my age you don’t think of writing a will.

So when I died, I was young, with no will, with a family that had years of experience pressuring my mum, and a father who was quite religious (for having barely gone to church that I can remember as a kid and sleeping or playing games instead when my mum took us, but I was never one to think faith should be sanctioned off, and tamped down, and hidden, in some stupid, austere building in a religion whose book says worshipping outside is the way to go and no worshipping idols, such as that bright golden cross with the dead guy nailed to it that you have that you could sell and feed thousands with, but y’know, go nuts), and an extended family that couldn’t be bothered to visit me as a child, and I therefore never kept in touch, and they therefore, didn’t know me from a hole in the ground. Plus, y’know, most people don’t like to talk about death and funerals, and the one person I could have talked to it about was my mum, and not-so-surprisingly she wasn’t up for talking about her daughter possibly dying before her. It’s just a thing parents have.

So I’m here in a strange state of awareness, in that weird out-of-body experience people always talk about, and finding it hilarious that my experience with it ends with no body to return to. Could this be classified as irony? Probably not. It’s never irony like it’s never lupus (except when it totally is, but you’ll never know). I’m here and watching this procession of people who I’m pretty sure the vast majority don’t know me for the dust motes they’re breathing in this musty old church, wondering exactly why they’re bothering. It is some defect I have that I don’t understand the mourning process? Is this some inherent inwardly-automatically known human thing that I just didn’t get handed during the creation process? Is there some defunct part of my brain, some cell that didn’t split properly in the sperm/egg, zygote, whatever-I-wasn’t-a-science-major conception of my life that I just legitimately don’t give a flying fuck about funerals?

I’m here, watching these people that mostly don’t know me, crying about how it’s such a tragedy I was taken so young, basically parading my bloated, puffy, dead body (I’m writing my chubby cheeks off as the not-formaldehyde stuff, I’m pretty sure even as my heaviest my cheeks didn’t quite resemble that level of squishy jelly donut) and I just don’t get it.

I think, were I still alive I would be pissed. I have (had?) a pretty wicked temper concerning stupidity. Then again, if I were alive then I would have nothing to be pissed about. As it is, the most I can muster is vague puzzlement and amusement. I was agnostic (and slowly even losing the theistic aspect of that), and a bisexual in a society that still didn’t understand that that didn’t mean I ate babies and wasn’t just confused and was curious about girls, or was too much of a wimp to admit I really liked girls, and the vast majority of this frustration came from the religion they’re now burying me under.

Do they not realise I thought their religion was just one of many? There were thousands of gods before theirs and likely to be many more besides. Really, what we truly know as fact could fill a thimble and even that is consistently being contested. It’s like Men in Black “everybody knew the earth was the center of the universe, everybody knew the earth was flat, you knew humans were alone in the universe". Or however the hell that quote actually goes. The point is, we don’t know shit, and I’ve never understood the logic in a religion that preached “turn the other cheek” and was spread worldwide through religious wars (the Crusades anyone?), promoted beating your wife and racism (in the Old Testament I will admit, but read the New one someday with an open mind and tell me it’s perfect, it’s written by man, it will never be perfect because human’s are inherently flawed), and told me from the second I started questioning my sexuality I was immoral, wrong, and a disgusting disgrace. Never understood it. And really, its extremists are the reason I became agnostic in the first place because there is not a single religion on this earth that is perfect.

So why the hell am I being buried a Christian?

Was it because I used to go to church as a kid? I stopped that years ago. Was it because I was Confirmed? I was questioning Christianity months before I finished my Confirmation.

So does this make my entire funeral a lie? And really, you’re blessing and sending to God a woman who doesn’t have faith in the religion you’re burying her in, and you’re stupid enough to think you know me well enough to think it’s what I would have wanted.

It’s not. It’s what you wanted. To make yourself feel better. And fine, go ahead. But know that my funeral is a fraud. My funeral is not my funeral. It’s your show. Your time to shine. To cry, to mourn, to be comforted, and be in the spotlight. That’s all they ever are. And you’re doing this at a Christian funeral for an agnostic woman who doesn’t believe in the idea of funerals, and spent every funeral she ever went to thinking it was a farce, being completely uncomfortable with public displays of emotion, and generally performed all her mourning hiding in a bathroom or outside in the woods where no one could see her cry.

So make your public display at a funeral for a woman who thought this whole process was bullshit. Go ahead.

I’m dead anyways, so what does it matter?