A Song You Want Played At Your Funeral

I want a closed casket at my funeral.

I’m very adamant about this, no matter what the reason is for my passing.  I find open caskets horrifying.  People don’t look the same in death.  Life itself gives us a unique appearance.  We are as much our movements, our body language and idiosyncrasies, as we are our faces, our features.

I hate funerals.  I avoid them.  Open casket services are disturbing and viewings?  No thank you.  I understand that some find them helpful, but between my own personal reasons and the experience of a friend (who was made to take pictures of her dead cousin, with whom she was close, by her aunt), I am not keen on them.

I want to remember people alive, as I knew them and loved them.  I want to carry them in my heart that way.

We recently put down one of our cats.  She was very dear to me.  She’d been horribly abused and mistreated before I adopted her, and it took almost four years to bring her around to trusting me.  Even to her last days, she still remained wary of feeling “trapped”, but she grew from a cat who would barely tolerate a pat on the head to a cat that would burrow behind my back on the couch and sleep there, content and purring.  Against all of my usual beliefs, I stayed with her.  I held her as she passed away.  I remained with her for ten minutes, knowing she was no longer in that body, but somehow needing to stay longer.  She was still in that room.  I petted her until she felt… cool.  I left then, the horror sinking in, the grief.

It was the right thing for her, but I am haunted by that image of her dead.  An image I never wanted.

So I refuse to haunt others.  Instead, I want to be remembered alive, breathing, thinking and laughing.  And music.  Always music.  This song comforted me through a devastating loss, and still comforts now.  The show itself was a great comfort – I saw it many times during a year of struggle.  I want it played so that it may comfort those I’ve known.

Those You’ve Known – Spring Awakening cast (Lea Michele, Jonathan Groff, John Gallagher, Jr.)