better ready than not

"And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years." ~ Abraham Lincoln

Debdeb smelled something burning this morning and asked if I burned something in the toaster. I jokingly replied that that's me burning. And from the smell of something burning the conversation shifted to death and cremation and open caskets.

She told me that when the time comes for her she wants to have a simple ceremony, nothing fancy just for friends to come to some place fond to her and talk about her. That's awesome, I told her. But I'm a bit narcissistic so I would rather the people I know will give me a "living funeral". I'd rather they extol on my virtues while I am still alive, I want their flowers while I can still breathe I the scents, I want to have a gathering of the people close to my heart while I am still around to laugh with them, and their donations can go straight to my bank account. Okay the last part is a bit too much, but I'm sure you get the idea.

That got me thinking how I want things to be when I die. Personally, I want my body burned and and my ashes scattered somewhere in an island we'd use to go when I was young or buried under one of the trees my father planted in our farm. Don't bother calling the relatives to converge for coffee and cookies, no need to send flowers or condolence cards, no need for tear-stained faces. Really, it's okay. You'll get to a point where I got myself into, it just so happens that I passed away ahead of you. I don't need a marble slab to mark my grave neither do I need an epitaph. This is just what I want on my own.

I know though that usually people need something, be it a ceremony or a simple gathering, to cope with their loss. It is a tradition of each culture passed on by our forefathers. I respect that need. So for those that I may leave behind I will not hold it against them if they decide to follow rituals, I will not rise from the grave if they choose to hold a week long wake, I will not haunt them if they will put a blow up picture of me on top of my casket. Whatever works. I’d be dead anyway, so yeah go ahead and party on.

Interestingly people do not talk about death or how they want things to go about when they die. Who wants to die anyway? The suicidal, desperate, apathetic, and heart broken ones maybe. But I've been there and honestly even if you don't care anymore about living, most times the thought of those we'd leave behind plagues us with doubt to end our lives.

But just because no one wants it, it doesn't mean no one is going to get it. Eventually, death comes to claim us. Everyone I know wishes that we can be certain when this would happen. We want that piece of certainty that would tell us as to when, where and how we're going to die. Maybe not the gory details but at least a little bit of knowledge to help us be prepared. But of course that is ridiculous. Even those who are in their deathbed are not guaranteed of the time of their death.

How a single grain of insight can change a man’s perspective of how he lives his life is amazing. Most times we are too consumed by the tasks we need to accomplish, responsibilities we need to look out for, our worries and problems that need to be dealt with, or the discontentment of what we lack that we do not take stock of what we do have and be thankful for it. I know this because I myself am guilty of it. As much as we want to live for the moment we think we are too busy or we have too much in our plate to afford to do that. But, you know, if we really have a better outlook of ourselves we will realize that we whatever we have or do not have in our life we can afford to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

It would be so marvelous to wake up one morning and say, “I don’t want anything more.” By then, when Death comes to take us we will not be full of regret for having lost so many years but we will be willing because the after Life is another adventure to behold.