Since I can't sleep and am feeling very hormonal (because my period is near), and very emotional, I think it's about time I write something that I've been thinking a lot about, ever since the passing of my grandfather.
It seems embarrassingly ironic that, as someone who wrote and presented at length about the importance of respecting the culture and practices of others (as long as they do not impinge upon the individual rights of a person), that I would take a shit on funeral practices - a rather sombre ritual that I assume is important to a majority of cultures. Funerals are important for a variety of reasons: paying your respects to the deceased, meeting and consoling the grieved, a final farewell - in commemoration of the person and the deeds that he has done. Religious reasons. The list goes on. I do not deny that funerals are necessary because they serve all these important functions.
Yet I can't help but feel angry at the stupidity of ritual itself. At the end of the day, funerary rituals seem to serve no more than social and legal purposes. Nothing that anyone is doing is going to matter to, or affect, the deceased. What meaning is there in guarding the coffin for 24 hours for three consecutive days? And placing a pearl on a corpse's mouth? And wearing a specific colour and badge to denote your position in the family? Why does the arrangement of the flowers matter so much? Who would be in a stable enough emotional state to plan and arrange such a complicated event, immediately upon the death of someone beloved to them? Is that even fair? Maybe I'm just feeling angry for my father. And for everyone else who was emotionally distraught. I hated seeing all of them in pain. How dare he be tasked to write and present the eulogy. He has enough on his plate as it is. I worry for his emotional health. I felt mildly insulted at having a newspaper representative come over to my house. A jovial, squat old man with a large camera swinging around his neck. His jaunty manner of walking. Them deciding what frame and decorative inner border to place around the most flattering photo of my grandfather they could find. A photo of my grandfather would appear in the obituaries the following morning, to be seen by the masses of indifferent citizens. Why should my grieving grandmother and father and aunts be made to undergo this tedious and emotionally-exhausting process that holds such little meaning?
"Shouldn’t death, I thought, be a swan dive, graceful, white-winged and smooth, leaving the surface undisturbed?"
An answer to this would be eloquently expressed through yet another excerpt from one of my all-time favourite books, White Noise by Don DeLillo:
“To plot is to live. […] We start out lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual.”
But such an answer is unsatisfactory to me. Probably because I could never fully wrap my head around the idea of adhering to ritual and order for the sake of emotional fulfilment. To feel secure and grounded. Or for dignity. I can't help but feel that all these rituals are unnecessary, and internal, genuine grieving is all that truly matters in paying your respects to a person, rather than lengthy and tedious rites and rituals. I must confess that I had little to no respect for the protagonist and his wife, who obsessively ruminated and feared death with every morsel of their being. Now THAT is what lacks dignity.
I got reprimanded for not looking like I grieved enough. But that's hardly fair. While I respected his figure and authority as my grandfather I barely ever spoke to him, so I was never emotionally close to him. To exaggerate my tears and deliberately look sadder and more drained than usual would be nothing but an insult to those who were actually emotionally close to him - like my father and my grandmother and my aunts. I don't care enough about what people think to deliberately look very sad. Another stupid thing that happens. People judge and assess you based on your appearance. They decide for themselves how you must be feeing, what you must be thinking.
I used to contemplate my funeral a lot. Morbid, I know. But it is something very interesting to think about. What would I wear, who is invited, what music should be playing, the shape and colour of my coffin, what to do with my lifeless corpse, etc. etc. And I have long ago come to the conclusion that I want a jovial, lively funeral. One that borders on being facetious.
I want lively salsa renditions of Beethoven and Mozart, and maybe some Fall Out Boy and Santana's sultry guitar playing during my funeral. I want there to be sangrias and Cafe de Olla and Swedish meatballs from Ikea and spaghetti bolognese. I want people to dress in bright sunset colours. I want swathes of rich and vibrant colour against a chic black backdrop (not funeral black, but elegant black), people flitting about having conversations that don't go like this:
"I am sorry for your loss..."
"She was such a -insert dignified, positive adjective- person..."
But instead have conversations like this:
"LOL do you remember the time where she stupidly decided to..."
"Omg did you ever judge her for how she talked to her dogs?"
"I shall miss seeing her fleek cat eyeliner"
I want my eulogy speech to have quotes from my favourite books. It shall be take place only on one day, and guarding of my corpse is unnecessary. I don't want to be buried looking all plain and virginal. I want my corpse to be decked in an elegant baroque-style lolita dress with the bombass makeup and hair to match. I don't need a pearl in my mouth. I want to be buried with all the books I love and the huskie plushie I received as a gift last Christmas.
I shall end off with another quote from another author I dearly love. Because reading all these things written by amazing people make me really happy and less upset about things.
“There's a reason for every journey, and mine was prompted by boredom and the recklessness of youth, by a wish to break the bounds of my normal existence and familiarise myself with life and the world at large.”
“If flatness were funny, a dinner plate would be hilarious.”
It seems embarrassingly ironic that, as someone who wrote and presented at length about the importance of respecting the culture and practices of others (as long as they do not impinge upon the individual rights of a person), that I would take a shit on funeral practices - a rather sombre ritual that I assume is important to a majority of cultures. Funerals are important for a variety of reasons: paying your respects to the deceased, meeting and consoling the grieved, a final farewell - in commemoration of the person and the deeds that he has done. Religious reasons. The list goes on. I do not deny that funerals are necessary because they serve all these important functions.
Yet I can't help but feel angry at the stupidity of ritual itself. At the end of the day, funerary rituals seem to serve no more than social and legal purposes. Nothing that anyone is doing is going to matter to, or affect, the deceased. What meaning is there in guarding the coffin for 24 hours for three consecutive days? And placing a pearl on a corpse's mouth? And wearing a specific colour and badge to denote your position in the family? Why does the arrangement of the flowers matter so much? Who would be in a stable enough emotional state to plan and arrange such a complicated event, immediately upon the death of someone beloved to them? Is that even fair? Maybe I'm just feeling angry for my father. And for everyone else who was emotionally distraught. I hated seeing all of them in pain. How dare he be tasked to write and present the eulogy. He has enough on his plate as it is. I worry for his emotional health. I felt mildly insulted at having a newspaper representative come over to my house. A jovial, squat old man with a large camera swinging around his neck. His jaunty manner of walking. Them deciding what frame and decorative inner border to place around the most flattering photo of my grandfather they could find. A photo of my grandfather would appear in the obituaries the following morning, to be seen by the masses of indifferent citizens. Why should my grieving grandmother and father and aunts be made to undergo this tedious and emotionally-exhausting process that holds such little meaning?
"Shouldn’t death, I thought, be a swan dive, graceful, white-winged and smooth, leaving the surface undisturbed?"
-Don DeLillo, White Noise
An answer to this would be eloquently expressed through yet another excerpt from one of my all-time favourite books, White Noise by Don DeLillo:
“To plot is to live. […] We start out lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual.”
But such an answer is unsatisfactory to me. Probably because I could never fully wrap my head around the idea of adhering to ritual and order for the sake of emotional fulfilment. To feel secure and grounded. Or for dignity. I can't help but feel that all these rituals are unnecessary, and internal, genuine grieving is all that truly matters in paying your respects to a person, rather than lengthy and tedious rites and rituals. I must confess that I had little to no respect for the protagonist and his wife, who obsessively ruminated and feared death with every morsel of their being. Now THAT is what lacks dignity.
I got reprimanded for not looking like I grieved enough. But that's hardly fair. While I respected his figure and authority as my grandfather I barely ever spoke to him, so I was never emotionally close to him. To exaggerate my tears and deliberately look sadder and more drained than usual would be nothing but an insult to those who were actually emotionally close to him - like my father and my grandmother and my aunts. I don't care enough about what people think to deliberately look very sad. Another stupid thing that happens. People judge and assess you based on your appearance. They decide for themselves how you must be feeing, what you must be thinking.
I used to contemplate my funeral a lot. Morbid, I know. But it is something very interesting to think about. What would I wear, who is invited, what music should be playing, the shape and colour of my coffin, what to do with my lifeless corpse, etc. etc. And I have long ago come to the conclusion that I want a jovial, lively funeral. One that borders on being facetious.
I want lively salsa renditions of Beethoven and Mozart, and maybe some Fall Out Boy and Santana's sultry guitar playing during my funeral. I want there to be sangrias and Cafe de Olla and Swedish meatballs from Ikea and spaghetti bolognese. I want people to dress in bright sunset colours. I want swathes of rich and vibrant colour against a chic black backdrop (not funeral black, but elegant black), people flitting about having conversations that don't go like this:
"I am sorry for your loss..."
"She was such a -insert dignified, positive adjective- person..."
But instead have conversations like this:
"LOL do you remember the time where she stupidly decided to..."
"Omg did you ever judge her for how she talked to her dogs?"
"I shall miss seeing her fleek cat eyeliner"
I want my eulogy speech to have quotes from my favourite books. It shall be take place only on one day, and guarding of my corpse is unnecessary. I don't want to be buried looking all plain and virginal. I want my corpse to be decked in an elegant baroque-style lolita dress with the bombass makeup and hair to match. I don't need a pearl in my mouth. I want to be buried with all the books I love and the huskie plushie I received as a gift last Christmas.
I shall end off with another quote from another author I dearly love. Because reading all these things written by amazing people make me really happy and less upset about things.
“There's a reason for every journey, and mine was prompted by boredom and the recklessness of youth, by a wish to break the bounds of my normal existence and familiarise myself with life and the world at large.”
“If flatness were funny, a dinner plate would be hilarious.”
-Walter Moers
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