Getting Ready
There is a scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper (a sometime partner in crime) are presumed drowned and the village holds a funeral service. In the meantime, the three boys, who had been holed up on Jackson's Island the whole time, are in the gallery listening and then make an entrance the current POTUS would envy.
I am sure that sometimes, some of us wonder what our own funeral would be like. Generally, those thoughts creep up on us when we're at someone else's funeral. We see the deceased in his or her coffin, comment on how life-like they look, whisper and wonder what the family was dreaming of when they chose the clothes, and count how many wreaths are stacked in the refrigerated room around the coffin.
Well, a woman who died last week in Guitiriz, Lugo, must have had the same idea, only she acted upon her musings. Ever since her husband died some twenty years ago, she had been preparing for her own demise. Those around her insisted it wasn't because of any morbid contemplations, but rather, as planning for the inevitable. The woman prepared for certainty much like one prepares for a vacation. She even went so far as buying her own coffin and having it await her in the living room. She went to a local carpenter, and asked him to build her the coffin in his spare time, since the local funeral home director wouldn't sell her one without an obvious, urgent need. The carpenter did so, after a lot of hemming and hawing, and delivered it to her home, free of charge.
Of course, part of the planning was seeing how she looked in it, so she hired a photographer to take pictures of her lying inside her future home. They had to make a second photo session because she didn't like it the first time around. She even wrote her own obituary to use when the time came, and detailed the routes the buses should take to pick up the car-less mourners. She planned everything down to the last detail, which was the niche she should be put into. To that purpose, she left on top of the coffin the key to the niche and a note to the pallbearers on just where in the cemetery it was located. Apparently, she had no children, and she didn't want anybody to go to the trouble of looking into every drawer she had to find the keys.
Death is a part of life, only most people don't want to think of it. They think they are too young (I'm only eighty-three!), are too scared to consider it (No, not the boogeyman, nooooo!), or think they will live forever (The movie Highlander was spot on, I'm another immortal!). This woman, who was 99, by the way, saw death as something natural, like eating when she felt hungry. It's not something one feels comfortable considering, but the truth is, none of us is getting of here alive.
I am sure that sometimes, some of us wonder what our own funeral would be like. Generally, those thoughts creep up on us when we're at someone else's funeral. We see the deceased in his or her coffin, comment on how life-like they look, whisper and wonder what the family was dreaming of when they chose the clothes, and count how many wreaths are stacked in the refrigerated room around the coffin.
Well, a woman who died last week in Guitiriz, Lugo, must have had the same idea, only she acted upon her musings. Ever since her husband died some twenty years ago, she had been preparing for her own demise. Those around her insisted it wasn't because of any morbid contemplations, but rather, as planning for the inevitable. The woman prepared for certainty much like one prepares for a vacation. She even went so far as buying her own coffin and having it await her in the living room. She went to a local carpenter, and asked him to build her the coffin in his spare time, since the local funeral home director wouldn't sell her one without an obvious, urgent need. The carpenter did so, after a lot of hemming and hawing, and delivered it to her home, free of charge.
Of course, part of the planning was seeing how she looked in it, so she hired a photographer to take pictures of her lying inside her future home. They had to make a second photo session because she didn't like it the first time around. She even wrote her own obituary to use when the time came, and detailed the routes the buses should take to pick up the car-less mourners. She planned everything down to the last detail, which was the niche she should be put into. To that purpose, she left on top of the coffin the key to the niche and a note to the pallbearers on just where in the cemetery it was located. Apparently, she had no children, and she didn't want anybody to go to the trouble of looking into every drawer she had to find the keys.
Death is a part of life, only most people don't want to think of it. They think they are too young (I'm only eighty-three!), are too scared to consider it (No, not the boogeyman, nooooo!), or think they will live forever (The movie Highlander was spot on, I'm another immortal!). This woman, who was 99, by the way, saw death as something natural, like eating when she felt hungry. It's not something one feels comfortable considering, but the truth is, none of us is getting of here alive.
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