It rubs me wrong when religious people “donate” money to pastors for them to come and give pompous speeches at funerals glorifying a deceased member of a church, as they tell a biography about the person’s life when they don’t really know the person at all. When I die I don’t want to allow a priest to use the occasion to proselytize to the crowd or to scare kids by implying I belong in hell because I’m an atheist.I had a friend in middle school who gave me a great idea: he said he wanted to have springs in his coffin so that when people came to mourn the body his corpse would pop out at them. I really want a very irrelevant funeral, and for people to not sit around praying when I’m dead, or comforting themselves with delusions that I’ll be waiting for them somewhere when they die.
If there’s to be a ceremony then I want them to break taboos, save money, and subvert those ceremonies. I wrote this before, but when I die I want them to read one of those cool Jisei (Japanese death poems), and for them to play Grateful Dead songs and dress casually, and for no one to take the rituals too seriously.
“Oh young folk —
if you fear death,
die now!
Having died once
you won’t die again.”
-Hakuin Ekaku.
Put that on my tombstone too.
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