Funeral Guest Book Quotes

He handed me something done up in paper. 'Your mask,' he said. 'Don't put it on until we get past the city-limits.' It was a frightening-looking thing when I did so. It was not a mask but a hood for the entire head, canvas and cardboard, chalk-white to simulate a skull, with deep black hollows for the eyes and grinning teeth for the mouth. The private highway, as we neared the house, was lined on both sides with parked cars. I counted fifteen of them as we bashed by; and there must have been as many more ahead, in the other direction. We drew up and he and I got out. I glanced in cautiously over my shoulder at the driver as we went by, to see if I could see his face, but he too had donned one of the death-masks. 'Never do that,' the Messenger warned me in a low voice. 'Never try to penetrate any other member's disguise.' The house was as silent and lifeless as the last time - on the outside. Within it was a horrid, crawling charnel-house alive with skull-headed figures, their bodies encased in business-suits, tuxedos, and evening dresses. The lights were all dyed a ghastly green or ghostly blue, by means of colored tissue-paper sheathed around them. A group of masked musicians kept playing the Funeral March over and over, with brief pauses in between. A coffin stood in the center of the main living-room. I was drenched with sweat under my own mask and sick almost to death, even this early in the game. At last the Book-keeper, unmasked, appeared in their midst. Behind him came the Messenger. The dead-head guests all applauded enthusiastically and gathered around them in a ring. Those in other rooms came in. The musicians stopped the Death Match. The Book-keeper bowed, smiled graciously. 'Good evening, fellow corpses,' was his chill greeting. 'We are gathered together to witness the induction of our newest member.' There was an electric tension. 'Brother Bud!' His voice rang out like a clarion in the silence. 'Step forward.' ("Graves For Living")

Some people have gone to great lengths to find out, but others take the easier way and have a funeral of sorts before their (last) big day. The most famous living funeral was that of Morrie Schwartz, the real-life protagonist of Tuesdays with Morrie, a book short enough that thousands of people actually read it and then sobbed over the beauty of celebrating a person’s life before he or she died. Of course, living funerals have a variety of benefits over “dead” funerals, namely because you can kiss and hug the guest of honor and no one will call the police. Living funerals have become especially popular in Taiwan, which is a huge swing from just a couple generations ago, when even saying a word that sort of sounded like the word death was considered bad luck. Now people turn out in droves to attend the living funerals of the terminally ill. One twenty-five-year-old man even invited the doctors and medical students who would be getting his body after he died to his living funeral, which must have made for some awkward conversations. One problem with living funerals is the tricky issue of timing. Ideally one would be held when the guest of honor was still well enough to enjoy it, but with some it’s hard to know how accurate the doctor’s estimates are about how long someone has. An eighty-five-year-old cardinal threw himself one in 2007 and two years later was still going strong. Still, no one was probably complaining, considering the alternative.