The older I get, the sadder life gets. I guess it's God's way of keeping us from getting to attached to this shadow of what is to come.
Anyway, Sunday afternoon, after we bid all our relatives farewell and safe travels home, I had this fleeting jolt of dread when the phone rang. It was just a recorded message from Walgreens saying that a prescription was ready. But I suddenly realized that this feeling of dread was becoming a regular thing.
I never dreaded phone calls even a few years ago. Well, except those calls between 5 and 7pm, and the calls you get around election season (those went way beyond nuisance level during the last Presidential campaign since I live in one of those "swing" states).
Just recently, however, my experience with the telephone has changed dramatically. I've made a couple terrifying phone calls of my own, most notably my 911 call when Elli had a sudden, massive seizure and the call to my husband from the ambulance as we headed to the hospital. I didn't catch him at his desk so I had to leave a voicemail, and that is a message that he said he never wanted to hear again.
We have also received quite a few calls with bad news in the last couple years. Enough calls that I really do dread picking up the phone every time it rings now. (That doesn't mean I don't want people to call at all. Maybe if enough pleasant calls flood the house for long enough, I'll lose that sense of dread!)
So, after thinking about this on Sunday, it was especially strange when the phone rang yesterday morning at 7:45am. I felt the dread twist inside as I reached for the phone. I didn't have my caller ID phone handy, but I decided it must be my husband.
By the time I found a phone, I heard the voice on the answering machine. It was my father-in-law.
It's so strange. When everything changes in an instant, I usually don't recognize it until later. In fact, my mind makes up reasonable explanations to prolong my sense of wellbeing as long as possible. (The only exception was the day Elli's heart stopped for 30 minutes. That day I had all the pieces - serious-faced doctor, accompanying chaplain, talking in a private room... but my brain processing suddenly slowed to 1/16 speed and I couldn't get it all to fit together until the doctor's words finally crashed into my gut.)
This was definitely the case yesterday. Even though I knew that a call from my father-in-law that early in the morning meant something was wrong, I still didn't comprehend it.
The news yesterday was of a sudden, unexpected death in the family. My husband's cousin passed away in her sleep Sunday night, leaving behind two daughters in their late teens.
It got me thinking about more than what it must have been like to wake up to your mother's alarm clock and find her cold. And about more than my dread of phone calls. I started thinking about funerals and how different my preferences are to those of my relatives.
I detest ambulance-chasing of any kind. Traffic jams caused by people gawking at the misfortunate vehicular accidents of others (called "rubber-necking" around here) are one of my pet peeves. Viewings or wakes or "visitations" or whatever you prefer to call the display of a deceased person's body are, in my mind, ambulance-chasing up close and personal.
Some may think this is really morbid, but I decided today that I want to plan my own service. I have told my husband this (and he heard the same thing from my grandmother at Christmas, so now he knows where I get it!), but in case he isn't around, I want it known that I absolutely do not want my body displayed after I die. If I am dead, that body is no longer me. I don't want the focus to be on that empty shell.
In fact, I intend to make it impossible for my family to have me in an open casket. I'm already an organ donor but I think I'll go beyond that and will what is left of my body to science. If there is any question about the cause of my death, have an autopsy done and find out. Sure, it's an invasive procedure, but that isn't me anymore! I'm much more concerned about my kids knowing what diseases may be in their medical histories to protect their own health. If you insist on a burial, don't spend thousands on a stupid casket designed to prevent the natural process of decay. I'd rather a pine box.
Please. Instead of a wake, celebrate my life and the (hopefully) many happy memories we shared. Don't do this at a funeral home - those places creep me out. Have it at a church or our home or some place pleasant. Don't do the funeral flower thing - unless you're donating live plants to a community garden. Flowers just die or gather dust and are a huge problem for the families to deal with afterwards. Instead, make donations in my honor to organizations that I loved, or establish a scholarship, or, if the kids are young, contribute to a fund for them. Tell funny stories and laugh and play music and celebrate that I'm finally free of the stuff of this life that kept me from being the woman God called me to be.
OK, enough funereal thoughts. It's time to live. And fold laundry.
