The Mummer

It occurred to me, at one point, to hire a mime for my funeral.

I’d heard it suggested on one podcast or other, and something about the notion appealed to me. Not a traditional street mime, mind you, that would be wildly inappropriate for a funeral, but rather something more solemn, a silent performer in black suit and mummer’s mask, representing me at the event so that my mourners could, should they wish, say to him what they had not thought in life to say to me…

I entertained this notion exactly long enough to Google the phrase “Mummer’s Mask” and not one moment longer.

On a related note, do not Google the phrase “Mummer’s Mask.”

Mummer’s masks, it turns out, are fucking horrifying.

I have no idea what was wrong with medieval Europe, but for reals, I would never in a million years inflict upon my friends and loved ones, in their time of grieving me, the horrifying spectacle that is a silent figure in Mummer’s mask, standing in the midst of what’s meant to be a solemn occasion.

I mean, the mime would no doubt be solemn, but in such a mask he couldn’t help but fail to adequately convey the tone of the event.

And so, upon reflection, I decided not to hire one for my funeral.

That does not, however, mean I didn’t hire a mime…

He follows me around, now, that I might refer people to him when I don’t want to deal with them.

Moments too awkward to handle, exes, old arguments, painful family events, or just whatever petty nonsense I happen to think is beneath me, I now refer to my mime in Mummer’s mask, confident that if they’re scared off by the freakish apparition I’ve contracted to follow in my stead then whatever they may have had to say couldn’t have been that important to them in the first place.

It’s saved me a great deal of time, my mime in Mummer’s mask, and a great deal of social anxiety as well, allowing me to focus my energies on what’s genuinely important to me, rather than the pointless minutia of my day-to-day drudgery. In fact, overall he’s been a tremendous boon to me, and I must admit, looking back, that I wish I’d thought to hire him years ago…

And if you happen not to think that this is an appropriate way for me to deal with social awkwardness in my day-to-day life: Tell it to the Mummer...

Disposing of my Remains

I’ve heard stories about funerals during which the deceased, as dictated by their living wills, distribute jewelry to their mourners, little glass jars on little silver chains, each jar containing a portion of the ashes that are their earthly remains.

After cremation, the notion goes, rather than having your ashes blown out to sea the option exists to send each and every one of those who’ve come to see you laid to rest home with a portion, that they might have some part of you, some real, tangible thing, to remember you by.

And I do admit, I find myself impressed by the notion.

It strikes me as the perfect sort of weird, passive aggressive power play to make, and one that you will never, ever be called to account on, because who would be crass enough to speak ill of a dead man at his own funeral?

You would know why I had done it, but there would be nothing you could do about the matter without seeming like the worst sort of person in front of everyone who’d ever cared about me. So you’d smile, and accept the little glass jar on its little silver chain, and pretend that it held some kind of meaning for you.

And, from beyond the grave, if anything beyond the grave does exist, I’d laugh.

“Here,” I would tell you, “have something you do not want, but can never, ever, for as long as you might live, throw away.”

And you would have to grin and take it, knowing as you did that I had, one last time, gotten the better of you with the sort of weird, petty, childish prank that you’d so long put up with during my life.

And perhaps this reminder of who I had been, and what it had been that drew you to me during my life might make you, for one brief moment in the middle of my funeral, smile.

Or perhaps it would not.

Either way, you’d be stuck with the jewelry.

Gotcha!

The Eulogy

We all though he was kidding, when he suggested that his funeral would feature a eulogy by the king of crunk himself, Li’l Jon…

After all, if he’d even KNOWN the boisterous performer in question, surely we’d have known about it previous to his death. It would, presumably, be the source of some amazing stories.

Yet, when the day came, and we gathered around, the friends, the family, to view what once had been a person who once had meant so much to us, there he was, his traditional garb replaced with a muted, appropriately funereal suit and tie, his dreadlocks tied back tastefully, his grillz glinting as he spoke in hushed tones to those who shared his obviously genuine sadness at our shared friend’s passage.

Clearly he’d had layers we hadn’t known about, details about his life none of us could ever possibly have guessed. But then, don’t we all?

And, when the time came for Mr. Jon to deliver the eulogy, he did his departed friend proud, a performer better known for his production tics and catch-phrases finally slowing down, waxing lyrical on the nature of friendship and of loss, expressing in ways we could not what we all wished we could have said to the man so nearby, laying at his ease, but also that it was now too late to say, as it would fall upon deaf ears.

And, as we reflected, we realized that Li’l Jon didn’t just speak for the dead, he spoke for us all, he spoke to the fragility of the human experience, and how quickly and suddenly life can end, how important it is to express our appreciation, our love, not to the man in the box on the dais, but rather to one another every day, because there is no telling which opportunity to tell somebody we love them might be our last…

And we knew that it was true, although it was a truth that we spent most of our time doing what we could to avoid, and we knew that here, now, finally we could not avoid it, and as Li’l Jon’s words sunk in we were moved by them, but moreover, we were changed by them. We couldn’t not be, it was unavoidable and not one of us would ever be the same.

We wept, at his words, wept openly.

Every one of us.

From his widow, to the wall. ‘Til the sweat dropped down our balls, those of us who bore his pall.

There was always grief, grief, motherfucker. There was always grief, grief, God damn…

Weekly Prompt Story: Church

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=25323

The Funeral

By Christopher Munroe

Walks beside me.

Walks on by.

Gets me to the church on time.

Or, at least, used to.

Now I’m terrified, I’m foggy, and my trust in God and man is strained nearly to the breaking point.

As the box is lowered into the ground, I can barely make out the words as they’re spoken, they echo and distort somewhere between my ears and my brain.

Gone in a moment, but never forgotten. The lessons learned and time spent were never wasted, the memories will never be anything less than cherished.

A modern love.

A lifetime.

Not nearly long enough.

Weekly Prompt Story: Silliness

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=24558

Silliness

By Christopher Munroe

“Enough of this silliness!!!” She shouted, tears of rage streaming down her face, and on some level I knew that she was right.

The time for silliness, truly, was at an end.

I put down the beanbags I’d been juggling, stepped down from my unicycle, removed my wig and bright red nose, and stepped to the podium…

“My father,” I told the assembled crowd, “died too soon, and his loss affected everyone in this room. But, and I think all who truly knew him would agree, I believe if he were with us now, he would have enjoyed this bit…”

The Funeral

It was not my funeral, by which I mean both that I was not up front, in the box and that I had no right to be there. I had crashed the funeral of a stranger, and I admit that that fact caused me a little trouble.

Yet somehow I had managed my discomfort, since there I was.

It was a lovely ceremony, overall. The eulogies were appropriately touching and tearful, and everyone had glowing things to say about the deceased, a peaceful-looking white man who looked to be in his mid-sixties from the view I got on my way in. I’d never met him, as I’d said, but I was never called upon to speak, so my lack of specific knowledge didn’t hinder my experience much.

Afterward there was coffee and commiseration. Vague pleasantries were exchanged, we recited the standard platitudes reserved for situations like this, said how sorry we were for one another’s losses, and how badly he’d be missed. We commented on how lively he was in life and how we still couldn’t quite believe he was gone. We talked about how much he’d affected our lives.

I was lying, of course. He hadn’t affected my life in any way, the stranger they’d put into a box and then into the ground. He couldn’t. I’d never even heard of him until that day, I’d chosen the funeral at random and was attending on a whim. And I couldn’t help wondering, as I moved among the bereaved, how many of the people gathered were lying too.

Because nobody had anything negative to say about this man, no unkind word was once spoken, and a human life can not be lived that way. If you’ve touched enough people to populate a funeral, you’re bound to have pissed a few of them off. That’s simply the way of things, it can‘t be avoided.

But, whatever sins this man had committed in life, whatever flaws and shortcomings the people who cared about him had suffered through, the act of death had washed away and, baptised in entropy, he had emerged pure, flawless. Beautiful.

Loved unconditionally by all.

And, moreover, the people gathered at his funeral had, for one day, put aside their petty grievances and gripes against one another in the spirit of the event. They clung to one another with an unexpressed desperation, aware that anyone can be lost forever in the blink of an eye, and that every moment in this life is precious. They loved each other there, over coffee and finger food, truly and deeply, and they knew that life was short, sometimes tragically short. A body in a box at the front of the room focuses the mind on such things. It brings remarkable clarity. Reminds you of what’s important.

And on my way home, I was overcome with grief that I had never known this no doubt flawed, troubled man who nonetheless brought out so much affection in so many people. I had only heard the best that people had to say about him, true, but that best was very good. He seemed the sort of man I’d like to know, and the knowledge that I’d never get that opportunity caused my faux outpouring of grief to become strangely genuine. In life, this stranger had touched the lives of a roomful of people, had changed them each in turn in some fundamental way. And in death, he had similarly touched me.

This was not my funeral, no. And no, I did not deserve to be there. But there I was, and it was beautiful.

And I will one day have a funeral.

And I can only hope my passing will have a similar impact.

...on friendship.

He’d been depressed, convincing himself he was utterly alone, and we couldn’t allow it. So we threw a funeral.

His eyes widened when he saw us, gathered to celebrate his life. Clearly he was in shock we’d made the time.

And he was near tears during our eulogies. He’d never realized how many people he’d touched, lives he’d changed for the better.

He struggled a little when we buried him.

He struggled a LOT when we buried him.

I’d like to dig him up and ask how he enjoyed it, but it would only make the gesture feel less genuine…