It is winter and I am thinking of death. The Northeastern winter is a punishment to be endured. No longer the magical season of snow, it has been globally warmed and weather channeled into slush storms and wind chills. Beauteous snowstorms and winter wonderlands belong to the past, having escaped to the north ahead of onrushing greenhouse gases.
This year, the season’s first snowman has thawed and refrozen into a dirty, hardened gray ice pile in the brown grass. We’ve plucked the hat from the corpse and thrown out its carrot nose lest the decay metaphor take on a nasty olfactory component.
Two winters ago, my mother died. She had asked for a funeral at a defunct chapel to be performed by a now retired minister. As the arrangements were made as best as they could, the weeks dragged on. We grieved in suspended animation until time could be pried from everyone’s schedule to meet, grieve and remember.
The experience made me decide two things. First, I always thought I would be cremated, but you don’t get off that easy. I’m going into the ground with whatever I have left and you better bury me before I start to stink. Secondly, I’m going to have an old fashioned Irish wake. The drinks are on me, or more precisely my life insurance proceeds. So if I mean anything to you, drop whatever you’re doing, get to my wake, and attend my funeral. I’m working on an efficient way to let everyone know I’ve died. I think Facebook should create some way to simply change your status to dead.
Regardless of how you are informed, here’s my point, if you can’t make it on three or four days notice, I wasn’t that important to you and I don’t want you drinking my booze even if I’m dead at the time.
I may sound bitter, but I’m doing this for all of you. Come party, drink, reminisce, laugh, cry, and then get back to living.
