I don’t like to attend funerals. When I die, I don’t want a funeral, because I’m sure of one thing: if I don’t like other people’s funerals, I’m going to hate my own.
And I don’t want a wake. I don’t like the idea of lying on display, dead, in a mahogany convertible with the top down. Everybody looking, and you’re dead. They have no idea you’re wearing short pants, and have no back in your jacket. It’s embarrassing. Especially if they use too much makeup, and you look like a deceased drag queen.
And as you’re lying there half-naked, one by one they kneel down and stare silently into your coffin. It’s supposed to look reverent. What they’re really doing is subtracting their age from yours to find out how much time they have left. That is, if they’re younger. If they’re older, they just gloat because you died first.
“He looks good.”
“Dave, he’s dead.”
“I know. But when he was alive he didn’t look this good.”
It’s a perverse fact that in death you grow more popular. As soon as you’re out of everyone’s way, your approval curve moves sharply upward. You get more flowers when you die than you got your whole life. All your flowers arrive at once. Too late.
And people say the nicest things about you. They’ll even make things up: “You know, Jeff was a scumbag. A complete degenerate scumbag. But he meant well! You have to give him that. He was a complete degenerate well-meaning scumbag. Poor Jeff.”
“Poor ”is a big word when discussing the dead.
“Poor Bill is dead.”
“Yeah, poor Bill.”
“And poor Tom is gone.”
“Jeez, yeah, poor Tom.”
“Poor John died.”
“Poor John. Hey, what about Ed?”
“Ed? That motherfucker is still alive! I wish he would die.”
“Yeah. The dirty prick. Let’s kill him.”