My last wishes when I ring down the curtain and join the choir invisible

When I die, I want what's done with my body to be what makes a difference for the living.

This seems only appropriate, all things considered. What happens to my body won't make much difference to me since I'll be dead. Stuff me afterward with all the sawdust you want, cremate me and stick my ashes in an urn on the mantlepiece, or turn me into fertilizer. I really won't care. I'll already be dead.

That's why I want things to benefit the living. I want all my harvestable organs and blood removed. Give someone else a chance.

Cremate me if you want. Scattering the ashes makes a degree of sense since it symbolizes that I am being borne away to heaven, but only if my family wants it that way. My wife's dad was cremated after dying while she was a college sophomore. Not only didn't she get to see his body, she doesn't have a place to visit. Kind of a double-whammy.

My grandmother was cremated before her funeral in 1991, and it was hard for me to feel a sense of closure because I never saw her body. Cremation's fine, I just wish emotionally that I had been able to say goodbye.

Death is a long way off, I hope; and when it comes, I hope to greet it with as much sass and snark as I've greeted life. But when I say goodbye, I want to do it with a grace that befits the people around me. Give them what they need, and let me go my way in peace.



Copyright © 2003 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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