My mom has been the executrix of her oldest sister’s finances, since she had to be homed. (Not Alzheimer’s. Senile dementia. They’re different, according to my mom who could probably give a seminar.) It’ been about four/five years.
My aunt died early on 2-14. And my mom is trying to put together some sort of memorial service for this weekend. (Going back to Kentucky.)
She has a meeting room. (Pictures. Candles. Maybe the ashes.) She has some ideas about what she’ll talk about. *No one is my family is religious. Spiritual, sure.
We were talking about it this weekend, and I mentioned one of my favorite things from Pterry’s Death speaking.
Other person: Isn’t my life supposed to flash before my eyes?
DEATH: IT DID. IT WAS CALLED YOUR LIFE.
And my mom cracked up.
“I want something to say like that!”
And I don’t mean funny. But profound?
*And she does plan to say The Lord’s Prayer. It’s comforting.
(Oh, and please don’t bother offering me condolences. What I knew of my aunt I didn’t care for.)
So come my friends, be not afraid;
We are so lightly here
It is in Love that we are made
In Love we disappear.
–Leonard Cohen, A Thousand Kisses Deep
Also, from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman
“But I did okay, didn’t I? I mean I got what, fifteen thousand years. That’s pretty good, isn’t it? I lived a pretty long time.”
“You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more, no less. You got a lifetime.”
“Life should NOT
be a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving
safely in an attractive
and well preserved body,
but rather to
skid in sideways,
chocolate in one hand,
martini in the other,
body thoroughly used up, totally worn out
and screaming
WOO HOO what a ride!”
The above has been quoted in several ways, with slightly different wording. I think one of us Dopers has it as their signature. In it’s original form it has been attributed to Hunter S. Thompson.
It has been said that death sucks. Having never died I can’t say for sure one way or the other but, having seen several people who did, I can unequivocally say that, if true, they don’t seem to be enjoying it as much as one would think. – Me, just now.
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
I plan to have this one on my memorial card thingie: Leonard Cohen, from Hallelujah:
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
My Mom’s had
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is,
since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd,
patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
“The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.”
“And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void in any heart so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!”
~~Charles Dickens~