Gone but forgotten. Or not. Your call

Obituaries are quite expensive! Some of them try to tell the person’s life story. Why? 

I had a friend die last October. No obituary, no funeral. It was weird but that’s how he wanted it. And a guy I knew from church died last year also. 

I suppose the following is true:
Gone but not forgotten.
Life is for the living.

Not sure what I’m trying to say here. I don like the thought of dying and leaving my family without me. That’s the way it goes though.

I prefer short and simple. He lived/He died. Good to have the notice so people you don’t see often get the word.

we don’t have funerals or burials anymore either. “Celebration of Life” and “Graveside Service”.

The band The Godfathers summed it perfectly with their song "Birth, School, Work, Death"

Everybody and everything living or whose ever lived will go unnoticed in the blip of time that we exist. Enjoy every sandwich. 

"Man is born, man lives, man dies.  And it's all vanity."

The band CAKE recorded a song called Thrills, by covering an early-70s tune originally titled Stories, by The Chachkas, and added voice-over samples of a monologue by a fundamentalist preacher.





My favorite obit belongs to Sybil Marie Hicks.  She wrote it herself (mostly).  I am truly sorry I never got to meet this woman.  She reminds me a lot of my own dear mama:

I know exactly where I'm going (this is not a religious statement).

"Just asking whether you would find it appropriate / comforting / flashy to have an obituary of you made public, ostensibly to be read by people who have never heard of you. Leaving a sort of 'Kilroy was here' mark."

I'm not afraid of death. It's the 'dying' part and the pain that usually precedes it that causes me mild apprehension 

I've thought alot about the social-group-thing that usually accompanies momentous occasions like weddings and funerals.  Weddings today are a thing because there is a whole industry built up around them and girls are trained from a very young age that their wedding is Their Day to Become a Princess.  But I tend to believe that very early on, weddings were crafted by village/tribal leaders to assign a sort of permanence to the bond of matrimony in order to help keep couples together.  Put more simply, "Hey.  You two are a THING.  We have 200 witnesses to prove it.  So don't think you can just walk away because you both want to sleep on the right half of the bed.  You are in it for the long haul, mister."

Funerals are similar in that way (to me, at least) in that it marks the occasion in a big way (dead guy on prominent display..."yeah, he's not breathing or moving) as Yep, He's Really Gone and He's Not Faking It Just To Avoid You Guys.  It makes it clear in everyone's perception that no matter how much they wish the dead guy was still around--he ain't.  I think it's also why there was and still is a thing called a "wake."  They prop up a guy in a box for several days just to make sure he's not still alive.  Soon as the flowers can no longer overpower the smell of food left out overnight, that's when you get out the shovels.

There was a quote somewhere - probably a movie quote - about what the purpose of a wake is. It's to reinforce through the many condolences, etc. the reality of loss for the agrieved, and to help them go through the grieving process.