Funeral Wishes Quotes

There will be other lives. There will be other lives for nervous boys with sweaty palms, for bittersweet fumblings in the backseats of cars, for caps and gowns in royal blue and crimson, for mothers clasping pretty pearl necklaces around daughters' unlined necks, for your full name read aloud in an auditorium, for brand-new suitcases transporting you to strange new people in strange new lands. And there will be other lives for unpaid debts, for one-night stands, for Prague and Paris, for painful shoes with pointy toes, for indecision and revisions. And there will be other lives for fathers walking daughters down aisles. And there will be other lives for sweet babies with skin like milk. And there will be other lives for a man you don't recognize, for a face in a mirror that is no longer yours, for the funerals of intimates, for shrinking, for teeth that fall out, for hair on your chin, for forgetting everything. Everything. Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human's life is a beautiful mess.

I just think that funerals are a lot like death itself. You can have your wishes, your plans, but at the end of the day, it’s out of your control.

Almost universally, when people look back on their lives while on their deathbed [...] they wish they had spent more time with the people and activities they truly loved and less time worrying about aspects of life that, upon deeper examination, really don't matter at all that much. Imagining yourself at your own funeral allows you to look back at your life while you still have the chance to make some important changes.

The Voyager We are all lonely voyagers sailing on life's ebb tide, To a far off place were all stripling warriors have died, Sometime at eve when the tide is low, The voices call us back to the rippling water's flow, Even though our boat sailed with love in our hearts, Neither our dreams or plans would keep heaven far apart, We drift through the hush of God's twilight pale, With no response to our friendly hail, We raise our sails and search for majestic light, While finding company on this journey to the brighten our night, Then suddenly he pulls us through the reef's cutting sea, Back to the place that he asked us to be, Friendly barges that were anchored so sweetly near, In silent sorrow they drop their salted tears, Shall our soul be a feast of kelp and brine, The wasted tales of wishful time, Are we a fish on a line lured with bait, Is life the grind, a heartless fate, Suddenly, "HUSH", said the wind from afar, Have you not looked to the heavens and seen the new star, It danced on the abyss of the evening sky, The sparkle of heaven shining on high, Its whisper echoed on the ocean's spray, From the bow to the mast they heard him say, "Hope is above, not found in the deep, I am alive in your memories and dreams when you sleep, I will greet you at sunset and with the moon's evening smile, I will light your path home.. every last lonely mile, My friends, have no fear, my work was done well, In this life I broke the waves and rode the swell, I found faith in those that I called my crew, My love will be the compass that will see you through, So don't look for me on the ocean's floor to find, I've never left the weathered docks of your loving mind, For I am in the moon, the wind and the whale's evening song, I am the sailor of eternity whose voyage is not gone.

What about your funeral, eh?” She asks. “You mean the one that is never going to happen ever because I am going to gather the seven Dragonballs and wish for eternal life?” She laughs. “Yeah, that one. What’d you want for it?” I muse it over for all of six and a half seconds. “Makeouts. Naked dancing. Maybe a cake.

Do you think God truly meant for us to keep Him locked in the church? Is He our Sunday pocket watch we only pull out for weddings and funerals and church services? He wishes for us to think about Him wherever we are. And a voice singing His praises at a ball is far less irreverent than a stone-cold heart sitting in a pew on Sunday morning.

I hadn't understood funeral pyres before, but now I do. It's ghastly to burn someone you love but watching the smoke going into the sky, I think that's rather beautiful now. And I wish Tess could be up in the sky. Somewhere with color and light and air.

After a thousand years pass, it builds its own funeral pyre, lining it with cinnamon, myrrh and cassia. Climbing to a rest on the very top, it examines the world all throughout the night with the ability to see true good and evil. When the sun rises the next morning, with great sorrow for all that it sees, it sings a haunting song. As it sings, the heat of the sun ignites the expensive spices and the Phoenix dies in the flames. But the Phoenix is not remarkable for its feathers or flames. It is most revered for its ability to climb from its own funeral pyre, from the very ashes of its old charred body, as a brand new life ready to live again once more. Life after life, it goes through this cycle. It absorbs human sorrow, only to rise from death to do it all again. It never wearies, it never tires. It never questions its fate. Some say that the Phoenix is real, that it exists somewhere out there in the mountains of Arabia, elusive and mysterious. Others say that the Phoenix is only a wish made by desperate humans to believe in the continuance of life. But I know a secret. We are the Phoenix.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud, And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe, And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, For I who am curious about each am not curious about God, (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.) I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go, Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others.

Before you are old attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.

That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me. "& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. "& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. "& that nobody is wished to see my dead body. "& that no mourners walk behind me at my funeral. "& that no flowers be planted on my grave, "& that no man remember me. "To this I put my name.

If you wish to live, you must first attend your own funeral.

How I wish, how fervently I ache, to take my mother's hand, kiss her check,tell her I love her, and watch her smile. For me it was not, nor can ever be. But for you, reach out now. Reach out for your mother's hand-the hands of those you love. Say I love you. Don't wait.

I see a cathedral, for instance, one that’s stood for centuries and I marvel and I wonder... How many people passed through the doors? What did they pray for? How many wars did they wish to see ended? How many christenings, weddings, and funerals? Same thing with a record, I guess. Who bought it? Did they ever make love while it was playing? How many times did they read the notes in the cover? Did a song on the album change their life? I suppose it's odd to think about things like that.

Dear Kai, The sun is probably streaming in through the big barn windows now, which means you're awake. And if you're awake, it means you're wondering where I went. I haven't run away from you, I promise. But I knew that today of all days, they'd need me in the house. Tatiana may be the head of our household now, but she's not the one our staff will look to in my mother's absence. And there is so much to do to prepare for the funeral. Also, I have to go tell my grandfather what has happened to his daughter. I don't want him to hear of her death from anyone but me. Thank you for last night. I wish I could say I don't know why you re the one I ran to,- you, Kai, not Tatiana or my father or even my grandfather. But I know why. And I have a confession to make. After you let me cry, after you let me sob and shout and choke on all that pain-after you did all that, and didn't say a word-I didn't fall asleep like you thought. Not right away. I lay there, wadded up into a ball, and you curved your body behind mine. You were barely touching me-your thigh against the edge of my hip, your arm draped lightly across my waist, your fingers entwined with mine. How many times have our hands touched, when we were passing each other tools or helping each other in and out of machines? Hundreds of times. Thousands. But last night was different. You cradled my hand in yours, palms up, our fingers curled in like a pair of fallen leaves. Fallen, maybe, but not dead. My hand never felt so alive. Every place you touched me sparked with energy. I couldn't sleep. Not like that. And so I bent my head, just the slightest bit, until my mouth reached our hands. I smelled the oil you never quite get off your fingers. I breathed in the scent of your skin. And then, as if that was all I was doing, just breathing, I let my bottom lip brush against your knuckle. Time stopped, I was sure you'd see through my ruse and pull away. I was sure you'd know that I was not asleep, that I was not just breathing. But you didn't move, so I did it again. And again. And in the third time, I let my top lip join my bottom. I kissed your hand, Kai. I didn't do it to thank you for letting me cry. For letting me sleep in your arms. I thought you should know. Yours, Elliot Dear Elliot, I know. When will I see you again? Yours, Kai

I just think that funerals are a lot like death itself. You can have your wishes, your plans, but at the end of the day, it's out of your control.

I just think that funerals are a lot like death itself. You can have your wishes, your plans, but at the end of the day, it’s out

The night-sigh comes and funeral march of years repeat, and ebb away. And in a golden glass I see the dream-wished day appear - and wait.

I lived through my funeral, but I wish I was already dead.

Aim to die broke. Give to your beneficiaries before you die; it’s more fun and useful to them. Spend it all. Your last check should go to the funeral home and it should bounce.

Would people be excited about your departure from the earth or they would wish you should come back again and again if possible?

& that nobody is wished to see my dead body. “& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. “& that no flours be planted on my grave. “& that no man remember me. “To this I put my name.

Are we really supposed to know what we want to do for the rest of our lives at the ripe old age of seventeen?” “Don’t you want to know?” “I guess? I wish I could live ten lives at once.” “Ugh. You just don’t want to choose.” “That’s not what I mean. I don’t want to get stuck doing something that doesn’t mean anything to me. This track I’m on? It goes on forever. Yale. Medical school. Residency. Marriage. Children. Retirement. Nursing home. Funeral home. Cemetery.

Gerald was to die suddenly, following an operation, in April 1934. Daphne did not go to his funeral partly because, in her grief, she did not wish to admit he was dead. Almost immediately afterwards she began writing his biography, Gerald: A Portrait, bringing him back to life on the page.

I told my version – faithful and invented, accurate and misremembered, shuffled in time. I told myself as hero like any shipwreck story. It was a shipwreck, and me thrown on the coastline of humankind, and finding it not altogether human, and rarely kind. And I suppose that the saddest thing for me, thinking about the cover version that is Oranges, is that I wrote a story I could live with. The other one was too painful. I could not survive it. I am often asked, in a tick-box kind of way, what is 'true' and what is not 'true' in Oranges. Did I work in a funeral parlour? Did I drive an ice-cream van? Did we have a Gospel Tent? Did Mrs. Winterson build her own CB radio? Did she really stun tomcats with a catapult? I can't answer these questions. I can say that there is a character in Oranges called Testifying Elsie who looks after the little Jeanette and acts as a soft wall against the hurt(ling) force of Mother. I wrote her in because I couldn't bear to leave her out. I wrote her in because I really wished it had been that way. When you are a solitary child you find an imaginary friend. There was no Elsie. There was no one like Elsie. Things were much lonelier than that.

Finally the church bell tolls, the same low tone it calls at funerals, and she forces herself to her feet. Her father touches her arm. His face is sorry, but his grip is firm. "You will come to love your husband," he says, but the words are clearly more wish than promise. "You will be a good wife," says her mother, and hers are more command than wish. And then Estele appears in the doorway, dressed as if she is in mourning. And why shouldn't she be? This woman who taught her of wild dreams and willful gods, who filled Adeline's head with thoughts of freedom, blew on the embers of hope and let her believe a life could be her own.

To change the subject, he tells them about Dr. Kashen’s funeral, where Dr. Li gave a eulogy. “People who don’t love math always accuse mathematicians of trying to make math complicated,” Dr. Li had said. “But anyone who does love math knows it’s really the opposite: math rewards simplicity, and mathematicians value it above all else. So it’s no surprise that Walter’s favorite axiom was also the most simple in the realm of mathematics: the axiom of the empty set. “The axiom of the empty set is the axiom of zero. It states that there must be a concept of nothingness, that there must be the concept of zero: zero value, zero items. Math assumes there’s a concept of nothingness, but is it proven? No. But it must exist. “And if we are being philosophical—which we today are—we can say that life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero. We know that both states exist, but we will not be conscious of either experience: they are states that are necessary parts of life, even as they cannot be experienced as life. We assume the concept of nothingness, but we cannot prove it. But it must exist. So I prefer to think that Walter has not died but has instead proven for himself the axiom of the empty set, that he has proven the concept of zero. I know nothing else would have made him happier. An elegant mind wants elegant endings, and Walter had the most elegant mind. So I wish him goodbye; I wish him the answer to the axiom he so loved.” They

Shortly before death he was asked what his wishes were regarding funeral arrangements. "Don't trouble yourself, the stench will ensure that I get buried." "But", the other objected, "isn't it wrong that the body of a great man should be exposed as food for birds and dogs?" "On the contrary, " he said, "it's the part of a great man, even in death, to be of service to the living.

{The resolution of the surviving members of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry, whom Robert Ingersoll was the commander of, at his funeral quoted here} Robert G. Ingersoll is dead. The brave soldier, the unswerving patriot, the true friend, and the distinguished colonel of the old regiment of which we have the honor to be a remanent, sleeps his last sleep. No word of ours, though written in flame, no chaplet that our hands can weave, no testimony that our personal knowledge can bring, will add anything to his fame. The world honors him as the prince of orators in his generation, as its emancipator from manacles and dogmas; philosophy, for his aid in beating back the ghosts of superstition; and we, in addition to these, for our personal knowledge of him, as a man, a soldier, and a friend. We know him as the general public did not. We knew him in the military camp, where he reigned an uncrowned king, ruling with that bright scepter of human benevolence which death alone could wrest from his hand. We had the honor to obey, as we could, his calm but resolute commands at Shiloh, at Corinth, and at Lexington, knowing as we did, that he would never command a man to go where he would not dare to lead the way. We recognize only a small circle who could know more of his manliness and worth than we do. And to such we say: Look up, if you can, through natural tears; try to be as brave as he was, and try to remember -- in the midst of grief which his greatest wish for life would have been to help you to bear -- that he had no fear of death nor of anything beyond.

Although Dalton tried to avoid all honors, he was elected to the Royal Society against his wishes, showered with medals, and given a handsome government pension. When he died in 1844, forty thousand people viewed the coffin, and the funeral cortege stretched for two miles. His entry in the Dictionary of National Biography is one of the longest, rivaled in length only by those of Darwin and Lyell among nineteenth-century men of science.

Here’s the other thing I think about. It makes little sense to try to control what happens to your remains when you are no longer around to reap the joys or benefits of that control. People who make elaborate requests concerning disposition of their bodies are probably people who have trouble with the concept of not existing. Leaving a note requesting that your family and friends travel to the Ganges or ship your body to a plastination lab in Michigan is a way of exerting influence after you’re gone—of still being there, in a sense. I imagine it is a symptom of the fear, the dread, of being gone, of the refusal to accept that you no longer control, or even participate in, anything that happens on earth. I spoke about this with funeral director Kevin McCabe, who believes that decisions concerning the disposition of a body should be made by the survivors, not the dead. “It’s none of their business what happens to them when they die,” he said to me. While I wouldn’t go that far, I do understand what he was getting at: that the survivors shouldn’t have to do something they’re uncomfortable with or ethically opposed to. Mourning and moving on are hard enough. Why add to the burden? If someone wants to arrange a balloon launch of the deceased’s ashes into inner space, that’s fine. But if it is burdensome or troubling for any reason, then perhaps they shouldn’t have to. McCabe’s policy is to honor the wishes of the family over the wishes of the dead. Willed body program coordinators feel similarly. “I’ve had kids object to their dad’s wishes [to donate],” says Ronn Wade, director of the Anatomical Services Division of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “I tell them, ‘Do what’s best for you. You’re the one who has to live with it.

You see?’ his uncle said. ‘He has nothing against what he calls niggers. If you ask him, he will probably tell you he likes them even better than some white folks he knows and he will believe it. They are probably constantly beating him out of a few cents here and there in his store and probably even picking up things—packages of chewing gum or bluing or a banana or a can of sardines or a pair of shoelaces or a bottle of hair-straightener—under their coats and aprons and he knows it; he probably even gives them things free of charge—the bones and spoiled meat out of his butcher’s icebox and spoiled candy and lard. All he requires is that they act like niggers. Which is exactly what Lucas is doing: blew his top and murdered a white man—which Mr Lilley is probably convinced all Negroes want to do—and now the white people will take him out and burn him, all regular and in order and themselves acting exactly as he is convinced Lucas would wish them to act: like white folks; both of them observing implicitly the rules: the nigger acting like a nigger and the white folks acting like white folks and no real hard feelings on either side (since Mr Lilley is not a Gowrie) once the fury is over; in fact Mr Lilley would probably be one of the first to contribute cash money toward Lucas’ funeral and the support of his widow and children if he had them. Which proves again how no man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

According to the gospels, Christ healed diseases, cast out devils, rebuked the sea, cured the blind, fed multitudes with five loaves and two fishes, walked on the sea, cursed a fig tree, turned water into wine and raised the dead. How is it possible to substantiate these miracles? The Jews, among whom they were said to have been performed, did not believe them. The diseased, the palsied, the leprous, the blind who were cured, did not become followers of Christ. Those that were raised from the dead were never heard of again. Can we believe that Christ raised the dead? A widow living in Nain is following the body of her son to the tomb. Christ halts the funeral procession and raises the young man from the dead and gives him back to the arms of his mother. This young man disappears. He is never heard of again. No one takes the slightest interest in the man who returned from the realm of death. Luke is the only one who tells the story. Maybe Matthew, Mark and John never heard of it, or did not believe it and so failed to record it. John says that Lazarus was raised from the dead. It was more wonderful than the raising of the widow’s son. He had not been laid in the tomb for days. He was only on his way to the grave, but Lazarus was actually dead. He had begun to decay. Lazarus did not excite the least interest. No one asked him about the other world. No one inquired of him about their dead friends. When he died the second time no one said: “He is not afraid. He has traveled that road twice and knows just where he is going.” We do not believe in the miracles of Mohammed, and yet they are as well attested as this. We have no confidence in the miracles performed by Joseph Smith, and yet the evidence is far greater, far better. If a man should go about now pretending to raise the dead, pretending to cast out devils, we would regard him as insane. What, then, can we say of Christ? If we wish to save his reputation we are compelled to say that he never pretended to raise the dead; that he never claimed to have cast out devils. We must take the ground that these ignorant and impossible things were invented by zealous disciples, who sought to deify their leader. In those ignorant days these falsehoods added to the fame of Christ. But now they put his character in peril and belittle the authors of the gospels. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. Why did he not again enter the temple and end the old dispute with demonstration? Why did he not confront the Roman soldiers who had taken money to falsely swear that his body had been stolen by his friends? Why did he not make another triumphal entry into Jerusalem? Why did he not say to the multitude: “Here are the wounds in my feet, and in my hands, and in my side. I am the one you endeavored to kill, but death is my slave”? Simply because the resurrection is a myth. The miracle of the resurrection I do not and cannot believe. We know nothing certainly of Jesus Christ. We know nothing of his infancy, nothing of his youth, and we are not sure that such a person ever existed. There was in all probability such a man as Jesus Christ. He may have lived in Jerusalem. He may have been crucified; but that he was the Son of God, or that he was raised from the dead, and ascended bodily to heaven, has never been, and, in the nature of things, can never be, substantiated.

But perhaps the most celebrated of these auto-incendiaries is Kalanos. You will remember, no doubt, that Kalanos (the Greek version of the Sanskrit Kalyāna) was an Indian ascetic—though not a Buddhist—who accompanied Alexander's army on its withdrawal from India. At a certain moment he announced that his time had come to die, and arranged for a funeral pyre to be constructed. He mounted the pyre, had it set alight, and, sitting cross-legged, remained motionless until his body was consumed by the flames. What an occasion! With the entire Greek army, and probably Alexander the Great himself, watching him; with each one of those hardened and undefeated veterans, themselves no stranger to pain and mutilations, wondering if he himself would be capable of such cold-blooded endurance: with the eyes of posterity upon him (his peculiar fame has come down for more than twenty centuries); and with the honour of Indian asceticism at stake (and Indian asceticism is India);—how could he fail? For a moment one could almost wish to have been Kalanos. And yet, from the point of view of Dhamma, all this is foolishness—a childish escapade.

Chris and I talked about the ceremony on the way home. “There were a lot of people there,” I said. “I would like a small ceremony.” “For a funeral?” “Well, yeah.” “I want a big funeral,” he said. “I’m gone, right? Blow it out.” He wanted bagpipes, music, and a large crowd. We talked a bit more. “Do you still want to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery?” I asked. We’d discussed the possibility several times; it had been among his dearest wishes. “I don’t know if I feel that way anymore,” he confessed. “Why is that?” “I just want to be wherever is best for y’all.” I was so taken aback by that. But it stayed with me.

And a saint put it a saintly way: [The arranging of funerals, the choosing of tombs and the pomp of obsequies are consolations for the living rather than supports for the dead.] That is why Socrates (when Crito asked him in his final moments how he wanted to be buried) replied, ‘Just as you wish.’ If I had to trouble myself further, I would find it more worthy to imitate those who set about enjoying the disposition and honour of their tombs while they are still alive and breathing, and who take pleasure in seeing their dead faces carved in marble. Happy are they who can please and delight their senses with things insensate – and who can live off their death.

The funeral service was held near her cabin, a week after Christmas, and was conducted by a missionary who said, “Last week the world did honor to a long-ago event that changed its history—the coming of the Lord to earth. We see at our feet here a parable of that magnificent condescension—Dian Fossey, born to a home of comfort and privilege that she left by her own choice to live among a race faced with extinction.… And if you think that the distance Christ had to come to take the likeness of Man is not so great as that from man to gorilla, then you don’t know men. Or gorillas. Or God.” And, as per her wish, she was buried in the graveyard of her slain gorillas, next to Digit.

The funeral was held on a rainy Tuesday at the church where the Brendan family were members. The high school was excused for the day so the teachers and students could attend if they wished, and many did. Avivah's parents mourned their only child from the front pew, tears falling as steadily as the droplets outside, smattering faces as well as painted window panes. After the eulogy, a song about heaven began to play over head, and as the song played, the Brendans lit a candle by the photo of their daughter, then returned to their seats. More than a few people in attendance were found dabbing at their eyes as the song came to a close. The group of mourners made their way slowly to the cemetery and laid the girl to rest, black umbrellas dotting the vivid green of the grass, grey sky bright, despite the rainfall.

[Funeral sermon, 02/08/1880] How is it with this young man here? Well, I wish it were otherwise; I wish he had lived a very good Saint, which, however, he did not do. We have not come here to indulge in any kind of false sentimentality. He was a drunkard; that is a truth and many of you know it. . . . His father lived up to the Gospel, and died strong in the faith; and his mother has been a very good woman, so far as I know; I have never known anything against her. This boy has caused her a great deal of trouble; and I have been sorry for him. Well, should we tell things? Yes, always; that day is not far distant when the coverings will be taken from the face of all people, and we shall all stand naked, as it were, before God--both you and I and this young man. Well this boy,--I call him a boy, he is a young man, and is a nephew of mine by marriage; and I would not want to say anything about him on that account, neither would I falsify the young man on that account; but let us tell things and understand them as they are. . . . I would say, I do not utter these things to cause any unpleasant feeling in the bosom of the family; they cannot help it. If I could have helped it, I would; if the mother could have helped it, she would; if the sister could have helped it, she would; if the friends could have helped it, they would. . . . We are now talking not to the dead, but to the living. I would say, Let us avoid these evils, they lead down to death; let us seek to live our religion, to obey the laws of God and keep his commandments. And in regard to the future, we leave that in the hands of the Almighty who doeth all things well; and we will do all we can to promote the comfort of the living and the dead.

How can you say such things?!' demanded Kon Fiji. 'Our lives may have changed, but death has not. Respect for the elderly and honor given for a life well lived connect us to the accumulated wisdom of the past. When you die, do you wish to be buried as a common peasant instead of as a great scholar worthy of admiration?' 'In a hundred years, Master Kon Fiji, you and I will both be dust, and even the worms and birds who feast on our flesh will also have traveled through multiple revolutions of the wheel of life. Our lives are finite, but the universe is infinite. We are but flashes of lightning bugs on a summer night against the eternal stars. When I die, I wish to be laid out in the open so that the Big Island will act as my coffin, and the River of Heavenly Pearls my shroud; the cicadas will play my funeral possession, and the blooming flowers will be my incense burners; my flesh will feed ten thousand lives, and my bones will enrich the soil. I will return to the great Flow of the universe. Such honor can never be matched by mortal rites enacted by those obeying dead words copied out of a book.

He’d mentioned it a month before. A month. Not a good month, admittedly, but still—a month. That was enough time for him to have written something, at least. There was still something of him, or by him at least, floating around out there. I needed it. “I’m gonna go to his house,” I told Isaac. I hurried out to the minivan and hauled the oxygen cart up and into the passenger seat. I started the car. A hip-hop beat blared from the stereo, and as I reached to change the radio station, someone started rapping. In Swedish. I swiveled around and screamed when I saw Peter Van Houten sitting in the backseat. “I apologize for alarming you,” Peter Van Houten said over the rapping. He was still wearing the funeral suit, almost a week later. He smelled like he was sweating alcohol. “You’re welcome to keep the CD,” he said. “It’s Snook, one of the major Swedish—” “Ah ah ah ah GET OUT OF MY CAR.” I turned off the stereo. “It’s your mother’s car, as I understand it,” he said. “Also, it wasn’t locked.” “Oh, my God! Get out of the car or I’ll call nine-one-one. Dude, what is your problem?” “If only there were just one,” he mused. “I am here simply to apologize. You were correct in noting earlier that I am a pathetic little man, dependent upon alcohol. I had one acquaintance who only spent time with me because I paid her to do so—worse, still, she has since quit, leaving me the rare soul who cannot acquire companionship even through bribery. It is all true, Hazel. All that and more.” “Okay,” I said. It would have been a more moving speech had he not slurred his words. “You remind me of Anna.” “I remind a lot of people of a lot of people,” I answered. “I really have to go.” “So drive,” he said. “Get out.” “No. You remind me of Anna,” he said again. After a second, I put the car in reverse and backed out. I couldn’t make him leave, and I didn’t have to. I’d drive to Gus’s house, and Gus’s parents would make him leave. “You are, of course, familiar,” Van Houten said, “with Antonietta Meo.” “Yeah, no,” I said. I turned on the stereo, and the Swedish hip-hop blared, but Van Houten yelled over it. “She may soon be the youngest nonmartyr saint ever beatified by the Catholic Church. She had the same cancer that Mr. Waters had, osteosarcoma. They removed her right leg. The pain was excruciating. As Antonietta Meo lay dying at the ripened age of six from this agonizing cancer, she told her father, ‘Pain is like fabric: The stronger it is, the more it’s worth.’ Is that true, Hazel?” I wasn’t looking at him directly but at his reflection in the mirror. “No,” I shouted over the music. “That’s bullshit.” “But don’t you wish it were true!” he cried back. I cut the music. “I’m sorry I ruined your trip. You were too young. You were—” He broke down. As if he had a right to cry over Gus. Van Houten was just another of the endless mourners who did not know him, another too-late lamentation on his wall. “You didn’t ruin our trip, you self-important bastard. We had an awesome trip.” “I am trying,” he said. “I am trying, I swear.” It was around then that I realized Peter Van Houten had a dead person in his family. I considered the honesty with which he had written about cancer kids; the fact that he couldn’t speak to me in Amsterdam except to ask if I’d dressed like her on purpose; his shittiness around me and Augustus; his aching question about the relationship between pain’s extremity and its value. He sat back there drinking, an old man who’d been drunk for years.

... People like to know what they are getting ahead of time. Thus, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, F.W. Woolworth: store-brands maintained and visible across the entire country. Wherever you go, you will get something that is, with small regional variations, the same. 'In the field of funeral homes, however, things are, perforce, different. You need to feel that you are getting small-town personal service from someone who has a calling to the profession. You want personal attention to you and your loved one in a time of great loss. You wish to know that your grief is happening on a local level, not a national one. But in all branches of industry - and death is an industry, my young friend, make no mistake about that - one makes one's money from operating in bulk, from buying in quantity, from centralising one's operations. It's not pretty, but it's true. Trouble is, no one wants to know that their loved ones are travelling in a cooler van to some big old converted warehouse where they may have twenty, fifty, or a hundred cadavers to go... 'So when big companies come in they buy the name of the company, they pay the funeral directors to stay on, they create the apparency of diversity. But that is merely the tip of the gravestone. In reality, they are as local as Burger King.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud, And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe, And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, For I who am curious about each am not curious about God, (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.) I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go, Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

I walked through the cemetery holding a bouquet of yellow and red flowers with brown combat boots, feeling grateful and bitter the sun was shining so brightly. I felt an urge to run, as well as a magnet to reach the group of people surrounding you. I wanted to be wearing white. I wanted to be walking down an isle with flowers and for this to be a different ceremony. I wanted to curl up beside the earth that held you, the pink and yellow petals, strings of ground hanging loosely in the wind and be beside you. I was angry you were buried, I resented the earth falling upon you. Each scoop felt heavy and indefinite. I'm not ready to know this is definite. I watched your chest, in a white linen shirt last night wishing for your chest to rise. But when I kissed your forehead it was cold. And when I held your hands it wasn't you. It was a shell. It was a vessel. It was empty. The first time I heard your new music it was by accident and your voice drove me from your home into hysterics. But when I entered your home and it played with your casket it was welcome. I read your letter with your mom and dad out loud beside you, and halfway through "spelunking in your soul" started to play. That was a gift, thank you. Today walking back from the funeral a green and black beetle landed in my hair and crawled onto my finger. I just had a bad moment with a woman in your life and I felt you in the little beetle. I'm writing something to be read at your celebration of life. It's not going to be read by me. I have a wedding in Joshua tree. But I will celebrate you in the desert there. I wanted to read the poem "sex and wine for breakfast" I wrote about you but figured I would go less steamy. I love you.

What I gleaned from all this research is that empathy is the result of numerous cognitive and affective processes, all firing away behind the scenes somewhere in our brains. Cognitive processes allow us to understand the mental state of another person—his or her emotions, desires, beliefs, intentions, et cetera—which in turn helps us to understand and even predict the person’s actions or behaviors. They allow us to step outside of our own experience in order to take on and understand other people’s perspectives—something that every wife on the planet wishes her husband would do. The affective component of empathy is more related to our emotional responses to the mental states that we observe in other people. This component allows us to feel some appropriate and non-egocentric emotional response to another person’s emotions—something else that every wife on the planet wishes her husband would do. Empathy involves both processes, and while they operate independently of one another, there is some overlap. A graphical representation of empathy might involve a Venn diagram—two circles, one for the affective component and one for the cognitive, slightly overlapping, with me standing well outside of both circles talking incessantly about the weather during a funeral. In people with Asperger syndrome and other autism spectrum conditions, these mechanisms of understanding are much less reliable and productive than in neurotypicals. Those of us living within the parameters of an autism spectrum condition simply can’t engage the empathic processes that allow for social reasoning and emotional awareness. Furthermore, we have difficulty separating ourselves from our own perspectives (the word autism comes from the Greek word autos, meaning “self”), so we can’t easily understand or even access the perspectives and feelings of others.

Even if we do not suffer from religious mania, unrequited love, loneliness or jealousy, most readers can identify with Burton’s account of information overload over three centuries before the invention of the internet, an extraordinary broadside which is worth quoting in full: I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland &c. daily musters and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies, and sea-fights, peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion &c. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays; then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villanies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of Princes, new discoveries, expeditions; now comical then tragical matters. To-day we hear of new Lords and officers created, to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps &c. Thus I daily hear, and such like, both private and public news.37 And that way, Burton reminds us, that way madness lies…

I miss Diana more than I can express. The world seems a colder place without her luminous presence. To had had Diana’s friendship, to have known her personally, has been a gift beyond comparison. She brought joy and pride and a touch of glamour to my life for years. I loved and admired her without reservation. When Patrick recognized her picture on magazine covers, I thought how incredible it was that we actually knew the beautiful, famous Diana. Best of all, we knew she was even lovelier inside. I read her letters, feeling deeply touched that she continued to care for us. Seeing her in person--warm, unpretentious, and radiant--was a thrill that lasted a long, long time. It truly was, “like being brushed by angels’ wings,” as my friend at the funeral had said. Whoever would have thought when I called for a nanny so many years ago, that magic would enter my life. My family and I watched her dazzling progress from a shy teenager to a multi-faceted and charismatic woman. She fulfilled her many roles so beautifully. Yet to me, Diana was a beloved friend, not the world-famous Princess of Wales. Behind the glamour, I saw the qualities I’d always admired in her--kindness, integrity, and grace in all she did. Above all, Diana was born to be a mother. Showing affection was as natural to her as breathing. I saw her tender care for my young son. I know she was an utterly devoted mother to her own boys, giving them unconditional love and deriving her greatest joy in life from them. I’ve wished so often that her life had been a fairytale, that Diana had been spared the pain and loneliness she suffered. But without the despair, she might not have developed the strength and humanity that reached out to people everywhere. Diana instinctively looked beyond her own problems to ease the pain and distress of others. She touched so many people in her short lifetime. I never thought it would end this way--that she would die so young. I will always remember, as the last hymn faded into silence at her funeral, the solemn tread of the soldiers’ boots--so haunting, so final--as they carried her casket through the Abbey. I couldn’t bear that she was leaving forever. For months now, I’ve searched for some solace in this tragedy. I hope that Diana’s untimely death and the worldwide mourning for her have silenced forever those who belittled her values and doubted her appeal. She rests peacefully now beyond reproach--young and beautiful. Diana, you were greater than we realized. We will never, never forget you.

Willie sat with her elbow on the table, her hand shading her eyes. “I wish you knew how remarkable you are, Ella. So much deeper than anybody else I know. Even the grownups.” “Is that good, Willie? To be deep?

They seem to have accepted that she’s gone.” “I don’t see how they could be sure she is. But I wish we’d known. Could’ve brought some flowers.” “Daedra never suggested this. It seems to be a surprise.” “A surprise funeral? You do that, here?” “A first, for me.

Alone, [Chamcha] all at once remembered that he and Pamela had once disagreed, as they disagreed on everything, on a short-story they’d both read, whose theme was precisely the nature of the unforgivable. Title and author eluded him, but the story came back vividly. A man and a woman had been intimate friends (never lovers) for all their adult lives. On his twenty-first birthday (they were both poor at the time) she had given him, as a joke, the most horrible, cheap glass vase she could find, in colours a garish parody of Venetian gaiety. Twenty years later, when they were both successful and greying, she visited his home and quarrelled with him over his treatment of a mutual friend. In the course of the quarrel her eye fell upon the old vase, which he still kept in pride of place on his sitting-room mantelpiece, and, without pausing in her tirade, she swept it to the floor, crushing it beyond hope of repair. He never spoke to her again; when she died, half a century later, he refused to visit her deathbed or attend her funeral, even though messengers were sent to tell him that these were her dearest wishes. ‘Tell her,’ he said to the emissaries, 'that she never knew how much I valued what she broke.’ The emissaries argued, pleaded, raged. If she had not known how much meaning he had invested in the trifle, how could she in all fairness be blamed? And had she not made countless attempts, over the years, to apologize and atone? And she was dying, for heaven’s sake; could not this ancient, childish rift be healed at last? They had lost a lifetime’s friendship; could they not even say goodbye? 'No,’ said the unforgiving man. – 'Really because of the vase? Or are you concealing some other, darker matter?’ – 'It was the vase,’ he answered, 'the vase, and nothing but.’ Pamela thought the man petty and cruel, but Chamcha had even then appreciated the curious privacy, the inexplicable inwardness of the issue. 'Nobody can judge an internal injury,’ he had said, 'by the size of the superficial wound, of the hole.

At Liebling’s funeral, Mitchell offered the eulogy. The service was held at Frank E. Campbell’s celebrated funeral home at 81st and Madison, and Mitchell told the mourners that he and Liebling had come there together on a number of occasions—one time in particular, he recalled, for the funeral of an old newspaper colleague. In accord with the deceased’s wishes, Mitchell said, literally no words were spoken at the service. “Everybody sat for a while with his own thoughts,” he continued. “Some music was played, and then it was over. I was shocked by this, and, as Joe and I walked up the street afterwards, I said so, but Joe said that he wasn’t. I have forgotten his exact words, but he said something to the effect that it was the only funeral he had ever attended that he completely approved of.

I hoped he wasn’t dating her. He deserved better. Like me, I wanted to add, but come on, that’s still just wishful thinking on my part.

If brute force wouldn't suffice, however, there was always the famous Viking cunning. The fleet was put to anchor and under a flag of truce some Vikings approached the gate. Their leader, they claimed, was dying and wished to be baptized as a Christian. As proof, they had brought along the ailing Hastein on a litter, groaning and sweating.  The request presented a moral dilemma for the Italians. As Christians they could hardly turn away a dying penitent, but they didn't trust the Vikings and expected a trick. The local count, in consultation with the bishop, warily decided to admit Hastein, but made sure that he was heavily guarded. A detachment of soldiers was sent to collect Hastein and a small retinue while the rest of the Vikings waited outside.  Despite the misgivings, the people of Luna flocked to see the curiosity of a dreaded barbarian peacefully inside their city. The Vikings were on their best behavior as they were escorted to the cathedral, remaining silent and respectful. Throughout the service, which probably lasted a few hours, Hastein was a picture of reverence and weakness, a dying man who had finally seen the light. The bishop performed the baptism, and the count stood in as godfather, christening Hastein with a new name. When the rite had concluded, the Vikings respectfully picked up the litter and carried their stricken leader back to the ships.  That night, a Viking messenger reappeared at the gates, and after thanking the count for allowing the baptism, sadly informed him that Hastein had died. Before he expired, however, he had asked to be given a funeral mass and to be buried in the holy ground of the cathedral cemetery.  The next day a solemn procession of fifty Vikings, each dressed in long robes of mourning, entered the city carrying Hastein's corpse on a bier. Virtually all the inhabitants of the city had turned out to witness the event, joining the cavalcade all the way to the cathedral. The bishop, surrounded by a crowd of monks and priests bearing candles, blessed the coffin with holy water, and led the entire procession inside.  As the bishop launched into the funerary Mass, reminding all good Christians to look forward to the day of resurrection, the coffin lid was abruptly thrown to the ground and a very much alive Hastein leapt out. As he cut down the bishop, his men threw off their cloaks and drew their weapons. A few ran to bar the doors, the rest set about slaughtering the congregation.  At the same time – perhaps alerted by the tolling bell – Bjorn Ironside led the remaining Vikings into the city and they fanned out, looking for treasure. The plundering lasted for the entire day. Portable goods were loaded onto the ships, the younger citizens were spared to be sold as slaves, and the rest were killed. Finally, when night began to fall, Hastein called off the attack. Since nothing more could fit on their ships, they set fire to the city and sailed away.97 For the next two years, the Norsemen criss-crossed the Mediterranean, raiding both the African and European coasts. There are even rumors that they tried to sack Alexandria in Egypt, but were apparently unable to take it by force or stealth.

the soul of the animal, as I’ve read that Native Americans do. It strikes me as a form of grace. Saying grace. Or just being grace. I am still on the Navajo Nation, wishing Navajo grace traveled with me on this land, or that Everett had packed some with my dried beef. But I don’t go so far as to complete the ritual. I say a word or two of apology out loud,

By contrast, a schoolteacher in North Carolina recounted the story of a sick black woman preparing for death. She gave the teacher her will, plans for a funeral and a grave, and insurance policies, requesting that she look after them. When the teacher asked her if she wanted to see her husband, who had deserted her, she replied, “No, and if you ever hear from him, tell him I don’t leave him even a good wish.” She then displayed an envelope, containing what she called her most prized possession, and handed it to the teacher for safekeeping. “When I am gone, no one will care about this envelope. Will you promise to keep it, so I will know I am not all gone so soon?” The envelope contained college credits she had accumulated after attending night school while working all day. 2

the person that killed you may hit the rock of repentance on your funeral day,,so be wish

I think god made a mistake with me. I think I should have been a horse. He probably has a lot on his mind, you know. I don’t just mean I want to be a horse, or I wish I was. I mean I think I am, only stuck in the wrong shell.

I’d like you to imagine that you are about to attend one of the most important occasions of your life. It will be held in a room sufficiently large to seat all of your friends, your family, your business associates—anyone and everyone to whom you are important and who is important to you. Can you see it? The walls are draped with deep golden tapestries. The lighting is subdued, soft, casting a warm glow on the faces of your expectant guests. Their chairs are handsomely upholstered in a golden fabric that matches the tapestries. The golden carpeting is deeply piled. At the front of the room is a dais, and on the dais a large, beautifully decorated table, with candles burning at either end. On the table, in the center, is the object of everyone’s attention. A large, shining, ornate box. And in the box is…you! Stiff as the proverbial board. Do you see yourself lying in the box, not a dry eye in the room? Now, listen. From the four corners of the room comes a tape recording of your voice. Can you hear it? You’re addressing your guests. You’re telling them the story of your life. How would you like that story to go? That’s your Primary Aim. What would you like to be able to say about your life after it’s too late to do anything about it? That’s your Primary Aim. If you were to write a script for the tape to be played for the mourners at your funeral, how would you like it to read? That’s your Primary Aim. And once you’ve created the script, all you need to do is make it come true. All you need to do is begin living your life as if it were important. All you need to do is take your life seriously. To create it intentionally. To actively make your life into the life you wish it to be.

At his funeral, a supervisor of his home told me he’d made a request of his housemates. Whenever they looked up at a plane, would they remember him? And instead of saying the dumb thing people say when someone dies, about wishing their soul would rest in peace, he wanted everyone to think of him and say, like a solemn prayer, “May his soul have kick-ass adventures, flying and flying and flying.

When ibn Killis was on his deathbed the Caliph, deeply distressed, went to see his Jewish counsellor. The Caliph lamented: ‘O Yaqub. How I wish that you were for sale so that I might buy you with my kingdom, or that you could be ransomed, that I might ransom you.’25 He later attended ibn Killis’s funeral and laid his former adviser into the grave with his own hands–an extraordinary honour for a Muslim ruler to show to a Jew.

Pope Benedict XVI, in a letter on hope, wrote: To continue living for ever—endlessly—appears more like a curse than a gift. Death, admittedly, one would wish to postpone for as long as possible. But to live always, without end—this, all things considered, can only be monotonous and ultimately unbearable. This is precisely the point made, for example, by Saint Ambrose, one of the Church Fathers, in the funeral discourse for his deceased brother Satyrus: “Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life, because of sin, … began to experience the burden of wretchedness in unremitting labor and unbearable sorrow. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing.” (Spe Salvi, 10, quoting De excessu fratris sui Satyri, II, 47)

dr. walter vogts most recent testament 1969 // I wish to have no special funeral // only expensive and obscene orchids // innumerable little birds with gay names // no naked dancers // but // psychedelic garments // loudspeaker in every corner and // nothing but the latest beatles record // one hundred thousand million times // and // do what you like // on an endless tape // nothing more // than a popular Christ with a halo of genuine gold // and a beloved mourning congregation // that pumped themselves full with acid ("Blind Faith") // till they go to heaven // one two three four five six seven // possibly we will encounter one another there

He lifted his chin and terror coursed through her like a paralytic. He was so much larger than Kenna. Stronger. It would’ve been nothing for him to curl his hands around her frail neck and demonstrate that strength until a final gasp of breath departed her lungs. She didn’t believe Dr. Merino was a violent man, but she believed passion inspired irrationality. Rather than strangling her, he gently tipped her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I hurt people. It’s a pattern.” “What about what you said after the funeral? That you’d never do anything like that to me. You wouldn’t hurt me.” The sentiment was laced with delicate desperation. A prayer whispered in the dark. “I wish that were true.

Many men need to pray for a new boss or a new job. But they should not keep sacrificing their lives and families for people who won’t cry at their funeral. Men never lie on their deathbeds and wish they could have spent more time in the office. They always long to go back and spend more time with their wife and kids. If you prioritize God’s priorities, He can give you greater favor at work, bless you in ways your job never could, and stretch out the income you do bring in.

The other thing no one tells you about is what happens after the funeral. When the casseroles stop coming and the phone stops ringing. That’s when it hits you. In the silence. When you wish everything would just stop, but it doesn’t. The sun keeps rising. The tides keep turning. The birds keep singing. And the mail just keeps on coming.

He sat down on the bed and explained to me that there had been some investigations into my private life. It had been learned that my mother had died recently at the home. Inquiries had then been made in Marengo. The investigators had learned that I had “shown insensitivity” the day of Maman’s funeral. “You understand,” my lawyer said, “it’s a little embarrassing for me to have to ask you this. But it’s very important. And it will be a strong argument for the prosecution if I can’t come up with some answers.” He wanted me to help him. He asked if I had felt any sadness that day. The question caught me by surprise and it seemed to me that I would have been very embarrassed if I’d had to ask it. Nevertheless I answered that I had pretty much lost the habit of analyzing myself and that it was hard for me to tell him what he wanted to know. I probably did love Maman, but that didn’t mean anything. At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead. Here the lawyer interrupted me and he seemed very upset. He made me promise I wouldn’t say that at my hearing or in front of the examining magistrate. I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings. The day I buried Maman, I was very tired and sleepy, so much so that I wasn’t really aware of what was going on. What I can say for certain is that I would rather Maman hadn’t died. But my lawyer didn’t seem satisfied. He said, “That’s not enough.

1990 I organized a conference that both Nelson Mandela and a minister from the de Klerk government attended. At the opening of the conference, the minister turned to Mandela and said, ‘Nelson, I grew up under apartheid. Now my fervent wish is to attend its funeral.’ This small human exchange launched a dialogue that led to the end of apartheid and a new reality for South Africa. How can there be peace in other tormented areas of the world? Through such small, modest, human encounters.

Pleasures of Memory!—oh supremely blest, And justly proud beyond a Poet's praise; If the pure confines of thy tranquil breast Contain, indeed, the subject of thy lays! By me how envied!—for to me, The herald still of misery, Memory makes her influence known By sighs, and tears, and grief alone: I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong The vulture's ravening beak, the raven's funeral song. She tells of time mispent, of comfort lost, Of fair occasions gone for ever by; Of hopes too fondly nurs'd, too rudely cross'd, Of many a cause to wish, yet fear to die; For what, except th' instinctive fear Lest she survive, detains me here, When "all the life of life" is fled?— What, but the deep inherent dread, Lest she beyond the grave resume her reign, And realize the hell that priests and beldams feign?

There are moments in life that you wish with all your heart you could take back. Like, just erase from existence. Like, if you could, you’d erase yourself right out of existence too, just to make that moment not exist. What I said next was one of those moments for me. On the day of his mother’s funeral, to the boy I loved more than I had ever loved anything or anyone, I said, 'Go to hell.

Aim to die broke. Give to your beneficiaries before you die; it’s more fun and useful to them. Spend it all. Your last check should go to the funeral home and it should bounce.

He searched the boy’s eyes. “Stiofain, if I can wish for one thing, it’s that you hear me now. Don’t be flinging the wheat of your youth into the fire. Work it hard, grind your anger into flour, and some day, I promise you, we’ll be sitting down to feasts instead of funerals.” “Oh, Father,” the boy cried, “you are a fine spinner of words. But I am drowning in blood!

found myself wishing, too, that Maggie could have seen my mother when she was young and Mama and I would go to a funeral and she’d stand up to read the dead person’s eulogy. She made the ignorant and ugly sound like scholars and movie stars, turned the mean and evil into saints and angels. She knew what people had meant to be in their hearts, not what the world had forced them to become. She knew the ways in which working too hard for paltry wages could turn you mean and cold, could kill that thing that had made you laugh. She remembered the way you had hoped to

Although I never wished her dead, I would have smiled through her funeral.

The clacks?” said Moist. “I daresay the clacks is wonderful if you wish to know the prawn market figures from Genua. But can you write S.W.A.L.K. on a clacks? Can you seal it with a loving kiss? Can you cry tears onto a clacks, can you smell it, can you enclose a pressed flower? A letter is more than just a message. And a clacks is so expensive in any case that the average man in the street can just about afford it in a time of crisis: GRANDADS DEAD FUNERAL TUES. A day’s wages to send a message as warm and human as a thrown knife? But a letter is real.

God forbid that I should ever be out of debt!” Debt is, in fact, the very basis of his philosophy: Always owe somebody something, then he will be forever praying God to grant you a good, long and blessed life. Fearing to lose what you owe him, he will always be saying good things about you in every sort of company; he will be constantly acquiring new lenders for you, so that you can borrow to pay him back, filling his ditch with other men’s spoil.66 Above all else, they will always be praying that you come into money. It’s like those ancient slaves destined to be sacrificed at their masters’ funerals. When they wished their master long life and good health, they genuinely meant it! What’s more, debt can make you into a kind of god, who can make something (money, well-wishing creditors) out of absolutely nothing. Worse still: I give myself to bonnie Saint Bobelin if all my life I have not reckoned debts to be, as it were, a connection and colligation between Heaven and Earth (uniquely preserving the lineage of Man without which, I say, all human beings would soon perish) and perhaps to be that great World Soul which, according to the Academics, gives life to all things.

It is seventeen years since she sailed slowly up the Mekong, in a slow boat with canvas awning, to Savannakhet, a large clearing in the virgin forest-land, surrounded by grey rice fields. At night, clusters of mosquitoes on mosquito nets. He cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, picture her at twenty-two, sailing up the Mekong. He cannot picture that face as a young face. He cannot imagine the eyes of an innocent girl seeing what she can see now. He is walking more slowly now. It is already too hot. Gardens everywhere on this side of the town. The funeral scent of oleanders. The land of oleanders. He never wants to see those flowers again. Never. Not anywhere. He had too much to drink last night. He drinks too much. There is a dull ache in the back of his neck. His stomach is queasy. The pink oleanders melt into the pink sky at dawn. The piled-up heaps of lepers scatter and spread. He thinks of her. He tries to think of her, nothing but her: a girlish figure seated on a couch, overlooking a river. She is gazing in front of her, no, he cannot see her, she is lost in the shadows. He can only see her surroundings: the forest, the Mekong river. A crowd of about twenty people has gathered in the metalled road. She is ill. At night she weeps, and it is thought that the best thing would be to send her back to France. Her family are alarmed. They never stop talking. They talk too much, too loudly. Wrought-iron gates in the distance, sentries in khaki uniform. Already they are guarding her, as she will be guarded for the rest of her life. It would be a relief to everyone if she would give vent to her boredom in an angry outburst. It would not surprise them if she were to collapse before their eyes, but no, she is still sitting silently on her couch when Monsieur Stretter arrives, and carries her away in his official launch. He told her: 'I shall leave you in peace. You are free to return to France whenever you wish. You have nothing to fear.' And all this, when he, he, Charles Rossett–he stops in his tracks–oh! he, at this period of Anne-Marie Stretter's life, was no more than a child.

In the end, my sisters went along with what I wanted—mostly because I framed this as one of Mom’s dying wishes. It was my job to give the CD to the funeral director—to Adam. I downloaded the song from the Wizard of Oz soundtrack on iTunes. As the service began, he played it over the speaker system. Unfortunately it wasn’t “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” It was the Munchkins, performing “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead.

If I must die young, bury me in a music box. I’ll be the pale ballerina with dirt in her hair. Attach my painless feet to metal springs and open the lid when you visit. Watch me rise and pirouette, my arms overhead tickling the dark night’s belly until I’m dizzy, until the stars melt and spiral into a halo over my head and I’ve stirred my death into the sky.

As she looked around the room at the few people who attended Ty’s funeral, she wished that she had took Blessing up on his offer to go to the funeral with her.

As the days since the funeral passed, and the house became depleted and unkempt, Kane naturally thought of how Avery would feel with his favorite soft terry bath towels still dirty from the morning he'd last used them, or how his toothpaste cap still lay discarded at the sink. Kane hadn't allowed housekeeping inside their bedroom; there were so many things Avery would have balked at after all this time. Now, as he stared at the empty refrigerator, he thought about how Avery had been a complete water snob. He'd only drink a certain brand of water, and Kane had gone out of his way to keep the house stocked to encourage Avery to drink more. That brought tears to his eyes, ones he successfully fought as he turned away, settling on a glass of water from the sink. He swallowed the pills down, dumping the rest of the water into the sink, and reminded himself all this was normal, no matter how bad he felt. Avery had occupied his head, heart, and soul for the last forty years. Of course he would continue on like this, probably until the day he died, and just like every time he thought that way, he said a small prayer wishing that day would come sooner rather than later.

She wondered how to un-know certain things, certain specific things that she knew but did not wish to know. How to un-know, for example, that when people died of stone-dust, their lungs refused to be cremated. Even after the rest of their bodies had turned to ash, two lung-shaped slabs of stone remained behind, unburned. Her friend Dr. Azad Bhartiya, who lived on the pavement of Jantar Mantar, had told her about his older brother, Jiten Y. Kumar, who had worked in a granite quarry and died at the age of thirty-five. He described how he had had to break up his brother’s lungs with a crowbar on the funeral pyre to release his soul. He did it, he said, even though he was a communist and didn’t believe in souls. He did it to please his mother. He said his brother’s lungs glittered, because they were speckled with silica.

buried Miss Cornelia and Mary Vance came up to Ingleside. There were several things concerning which Miss Cornelia wished to unburden her soul. The funeral had to be all talked over, of course. Susan and Miss Cornelia thrashed this out between them; Anne took no part or delight in such goulish conversations. She sat a little apart and watched the autumnal flame of dahlias in the garden, and the dreaming, glamorous harbour of the September sunset. Mary Vance sat beside her, knitting meekly. Mary's heart was down in the Rainbow Valley, whence came sweet, distance-softened sounds of children's laughter, but her fingers were under Miss Cornelia's eye. She had to knit so many rounds of her stocking before she might go to the valley. Mary knit and held her tongue, but used her ears. "I never saw a nicer looking corpse," said Miss Cornelia judicially. "Myra Murray was always a pretty woman—she was a Corey

Michael put a deodorant in the car which Julie wished he would stop called,'Aunty Alice's anti-fart stick,' in front of the children.

Dad kept saying that nothing in the world could be compared with the pain of losing a child. He said that he would not wish even the worst person in the entire universe to see the funeral of his own child. I didn’t fully understand the meaning of those words until I became a mother myself.

You have a mission. Most of us only wish we did. It’s the purest, most untarnished way to live a life. All the universe envies you. All the people, the animals, even the sun and the clouds and the night. If we could trade places with you, we would. So we line up at your back in admiration. We are all with you, Ella.

At David’s service in a funeral home in the city—which was then, and is now, all a blur to me—I do remember Becka whispering to me, “Dad wishes he could sit up here with us.” “He said that to you?” I asked, turning to look at her, and she nodded solemnly. Poor William, I thought.

In her hours of sorrow she had often wished that she might lie down and die; and, on the occasion of an epidemic, which carried off a great number of persons, she had looked with a species of envy on the funerals constantly passing the streets.

The readings and tributes were followed by a song, and they were all invited to join in. The lyrics were printed in the program. "No Rain" by Blind Melon had been a favorite of Blythe's, expressing the glory of escaping into a pages of a book. The woman playing guitar was a frequent patron of the shop. She had contacted Natalie and Frieda as they were organizing the program and asked to perform in Blythe's honor. As the lyrics of the song came out of Natalie on a shaky breath, she wished she could do exactly as the words expressed---Escape, escape, escape.

Next Day Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All, I take a box And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens. The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical Food-gathering flocks Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James, Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise If that is wisdom. Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves And the boy takes it to my station wagon, What I’ve become Troubles me even if I shut my eyes. When I was young and miserable and pretty And poor, I’d wish What all girls wish: to have a husband, A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish Is womanish: That the boy putting groceries in my car See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me. For so many years I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me, The eyes of strangers! And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile Imaginings within my imagining, I too have taken The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog And we start home. Now I am good. The last mistaken, Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm Some soap and water-- It was so long ago, back in some Gay Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss My lovely daughter Away at school, my sons away at school, My husband away at work--I wish for them. The dog, the maid, And I go through the sure unvarying days At home in them. As I look at my life, I am afraid Only that it will change, as I am changing: I am afraid, this morning, of my face. It looks at me From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate, The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look Of gray discovery Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old. And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral I went to yesterday. My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers, Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body Were my face and body. As I think of her I hear her telling me How young I seem; I am exceptional; I think of all I have. But really no one is exceptional, No one has anything, I’m anybody, I stand beside my grave Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

Your father is waiting, so fly up that mountain and through the alomb. Find Nardukha and tell him I have upheld my end of the bargain. Now it is his turn.” He stares at me, a dangerous light in his eye, and then his gaze travels beyond me, in the direction of the funeral. My hand moves to his muscled forearm, and I squeeze it hard. “ No. ” He sneers, his hand moving quickly to catch mine. He yanks me close, his head bending to look down at me. “Zahra,” he murmurs, his voice like falling rocks. “Why do you care for these humans? For thousands of years they have enslaved you, forced you to bend and bow to their silly whims. They have mistreated you, abused you, and yet you defend them still?” He drops his morning star to cradle my head in his other hand, and he licks his lips. His fangs flash. “Come with me to Ambadya. Be my bride, as you were always meant to be.” Revulsion choking my throat, I pull away, slapping him hard across the jaw, but he barely registers the blow. “I’m not anything to you, Zhian. I never will be. You should have abandoned that notion long ago.” “I did not bargain for your life so that you could play servant to these mortals! My father would have killed you thousands of years ago, like all the other Shaitan, if I hadn’t intervened!” “I never asked you to.” He roars, and I clap my hands over my ears at the terrible sound. Somewhere behind me, a horn blasts twice. “They heard you, you fool!” I snap. “The Eristrati are coming, and their charmers will bottle you up again! Go, go !” He snarls, his hand grabbing for me, but I shift into a tiger and snarl back at him, my hackles on end. Get out of here, Zhian! Go find Nardukha and tell him I have set you free! Now he must free me. The horn blasts again. At last Zhian comes to his senses, and he pulls back, scowling. I’ll be back for you, he promises. And you and I will be joined at last, the jinn prince and his princess, unstoppable and undisputed!

By Thursday the news had leaked out and a group of photographers waited for her outside the hospital. “People thought Diana only came in at the end,” says Angela. “Of course it wasn’t like that at all, we shared it all.” In the early hours of Thursday, August 23 the end came. When Adrian died, Angela went next door to telephone Diana. Before she could speak Diana said: “I’m on my way.” Shortly after she arrived they said the Lord’s Prayer together and then Diana left her friends to be alone for one last time. “I don’t know of anybody else who would have thought of me first,” says Angela. Then the protective side of Diana took over. She made up a bed for her friend, tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. While she was asleep Diana knew that it would be best if Angela joined her family on holiday in France. She packed her suitcase for her and telephoned her husband in Montpellier to tell him that Angela was flying out as soon as she awoke. Then Diana walked upstairs to see the baby ward, the same unit where her own sons were born. She felt that it was important to see life as well as death, to try and balance her profound sense of loss with a feeling of rebirth. In those few months Diana had learned much about herself, reflecting the new start she had made in life. It was all the more satisfying because for once she had not bowed to the royal family’s pressure. She knew that she had left Balmoral without first seeking permission from the Queen and in the last days there was insistence that she return promptly. The family felt that a token visit would have sufficed and seemed uneasy about her display of loyalty and devotion which clearly went far beyond the traditional call of duty. Her husband had never known much regard for her interests and he was less than sympathetic to the amount of time she spent caring for her friend. They failed to appreciate that she had made a commitment to Adrian Ward-Jackson, a commitment she was determined to keep. It mattered not whether he was dying of AIDS, cancer or some other disease, she had given her word to be with him at the end. She was not about to breach his trust. At that critical time she felt that her loyalty to her friends mattered as much as her duty towards the royal family. As she recalled to Angela: “You both need me. It’s a strange feeling being wanted for myself. Why me?” While the Princess was Angela’s guardian angel at Adrian’s funeral, holding her hand throughout the service, it was at his memorial service where she needed her friend’s shoulder to cry on. It didn’t happen. They tried hard to sit together for the service but Buckingham Palace courtiers would not allow it. As the service at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge was a formal occasion, the royal family had to sit in pews on the right, the family and friends of the deceased on the left. In grief, as with so much in Diana’s life, the heavy hand of royal protocol prevented the Princess from fulfilling this very private moment in the way she would have wished. During the service Diana’s grief was apparent as she mourned the man whose road to death had given her such faith in herself. The Princess no longer felt that she had to disguise her true feelings from the world. She could be herself rather than hide behind a mask. Those months nurturing Adrian had reordered her priorities in life. As she wrote to Angela shortly afterwards: “I reached a depth inside which I never imagined was possible. My outlook on life has changed its course and become more positive and balanced.

I didn’t think about it. Everyone else took care of the funeral, so I just figured lawyers sorted it out, or something, I guess.” The feeling you get when you find out somebody who has always let you down has actually done something really substantial for you is difficult to describe. It’s sort of like the debilitating humiliation I’m used to feeling, except instead of wishing to instantly disappear from existence, I’m wishing a terribly painful and drawn-out death for myself. I deserve it and then some.

Oh, Mother of Mercy! there came across my way a funeral procession! There, now you know it; I can tell you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Can you guess how I spent that night? — I stole a pickaxe from a mason’s shed, and all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens, I dug the fresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin, I wrenched the lid, I saw her again — again! Decay had not touched her. She was always pale in life! I could have sworn she lived! It was a blessed thing to see her once more, and all alone too! But then, at dawn, to give her back to the earth, — to close the lid, to throw down the mould, to hear the pebbles rattle on the coffin: that was dreadful! Signor, I never knew before, and I don’t wish to think now, how valuable a thing human life is.

The actor cannot, at last, refrain, even in moments of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effect produced by his deportment and by his surroundings—for example, even at the funeral of his own child: he will weep at his own sorrow and its manifestations as though he were his own audience. The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite; as in the case of priests who, when young men, are always, either consciously or unconsciously, hypocrites, and finally become naturally and then really, without affectation, mere priests: or if the father does not carry it to this extent, the son, who inherits his father's calling and gets the advantage of the paternal progress, does. When anyone, during a long period, and persistently, wishes to appear something, it will at last prove difficult for him to be anything else. The calling of almost every man, even of the artist, begins with hypocrisy, with an imitation of deportment, with a copying of the effective in manner. He who always wears the mask of a friendly man must at last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which the expression itself of friendliness is not to be gained—and finally friendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over him—he is benevolent.

Hi, Emily. You don’t know me. My name’s Liam and I’m Ali’s boyfriend. If you’ve been watching us from wherever, you know that already, though.” I swallow. “I’m sorry about what happened. Ali really loved you. I have no doubt about that. But...” I read through the hymns and the music, including Satie’s Gnossienne. At the funeral, Ali read a poem called ‘Remember Me’ by Margaret Mead. To the living, I am gone. To the sorrowful, I will never return. To the angry, I was cheated. But to the happy, I am at peace. And to the faithful, I have never left. It’s as though Emily is speaking to me, telling me that she can be happy for us. Her sister’s anger is not going to bring her back. I hope it’s true. I find myself tearing up, even though I didn’t know her. I can imagine how moving Ali’s recitation was. “Ali and I are happy and I think you would be supportive of him. Your sister’s angry because she’s hurt but Ali has no intention of causing her pain. Or your parents. Please, wish me luck

my spot in the back seat. It was the same look and phrase that everyone gave me. It happened at the funeral and it had happened every day since. I’d learned to hate that pitying look as well as the reassuring words that people spoke. Neither eased my mind in the slightest. I just wished that Mrs. Williams pitied me enough to leave me where I wanted to be instead of with strangers. When the car slowed, I peered at the house that I’d now be living in for who knew how long. I took in the untidy façade in disgust. It was hard to see much through the overgrown trees and garden that spilled out over the pavement. The long grass seemed to be springing up from the ground like weeds. They probably were weeds. How could Mrs. Williams think that this mess of a house was a good place for me? She parked the car and jumped out. Her heels clicked over the pavement as she opened the gate at the bottom of the driveway. The fence was a dirty shade of white and chipped in many places. She got back into the car and I noticed she was panting slightly. “Okay, here we go,” she said.

If there is murder in the heart, Stiofain, and blood on the hands, we must cleanse it with prayer and music and poems. If we do not . . .” He searched the boy’s eyes. “Stiofain, if I can wish for one thing, it’s that you hear me now. Don’t be flinging the wheat of your youth into the fire. Work it hard, grind your anger into flour, and some day, I promise you, we’ll be sitting down to feasts instead of funerals.” “Oh, Father,” the boy cried, “you are a fine spinner of words. But I am drowning in blood!