When Funerals Get Sadder

Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't go to yours.
-Yogi Berra

I think I've made this confession before on here but I don't remember since I don't go back and read these entries but I generally skip funerals. The cancer world has way too many people pass in general and the brain cancer one in specific has plenty of its own. It is an odd thing, in my personal experience of the last few months that while there is a pandemic going on, the cancer world has shifted. Many friends are having to delay treatment, others are far more homebound than typical (a common thing in the cancer world during treatment or always because of damaged immune systems). However, in my own take on it, I haven't been going to visit anyone at hospices because I've stayed away from high risks individual in the event that I am a symptomatic carrier (I've stayed fairly shut in overall but while I'm not afraid of getting it, I do not want to share it period but certainly not with high risks individuals). 

But now has come the age of zoom everything. Zoom dates, zoom meetings, zoom poker games, zoom happy hours but the latest one for my universe was a zoom funeral. Well, not the funeral exactly, that was still held properly though with just very immediate family. It was the memorial service but because they recognized that zoom calls can be overcrowded while anyone could be there for any part of it, they split them up into sections of life, work, high school, college, and my group, the brain cancer crowd. I caught a bit of some of the one before me but surely mine had to be the toughest one for the family to watch or to be part of because it's a reminder for them of those of us who are alive longer that odds are weird. He got exactly to the median age of the disease. It's also a reminder to those of us who met him that way of our own disease and luck and well, survivor's guilt. That can't have been the best hour of this call, how could it not be the worst?

The truth is like most funerals I would have skipped this one but it would have been fairly obvious and 'ruder' than usual. I am the guy who wants to be cremated and flushed down the toilet. I'm the guy who went on a good bye tour before brain surgery telling people that the guy coming out may not be the same one going in but this one loved them. The guy who came out, me, still does. 

I don't know what to say. I get paid, or used to anyway, to give public speeches but everything I'd want to say, I'd want to say to the deceased before not after death. Which is why I go to hospices and appointments with people but not funerals. The thoughts and prayers we send are good parts of the human spirit but I try to be consoling with presence or perhaps just presence. There was a preacher in the old days that when someone goes through your head you should pray for them, that was God prompting you they needed help. I have no criticism for that then nor now (I did it then) but now when someone goes through my mind, I reach out to them. Perhaps as I saw narrations of life in my friends page was the prompt but I've called friends from Nebraska, California and childhood recently. I've worked harder on staying in contact with my family lately too, including relationships I'd never worked on and working harder on others and still on others making some decisions that are overdue since well tomorrow is not promised. I've not attended anywhere near the percentage of funerals I've been invited to and out of all the ones I've ever been to, despite multiple offers to do so, I've spoken at exactly one friend's funeral. It was the first time I was asked and I've never done it again since then. I've just made it a happy to let the people who I love know that I have and I will long before then and other jokes and stories. 

I've gotten almost zero races of my own this year that were real anyway. But phone calls and zoom calls are real ways to connect and so that's where I'll keep working on the relationships I want to keep. 

If you're reading this, when my time comes to die, don't worry about my funeral. I mean why come to mine, I'm obviously not going to yours. But if you're reading this and we haven't talked in a while, reach out and say hi on zoom or text or email or old fashion mail. I will try to do it with anyone else that I don't want to say things about them at their funeral whether it be decades from now due to old age or weeks from now due to corona or far too close due to unforeseen circumstances. Let my funeral not happen or be the loneliest one ever but if we're friends let's not let our life be.  If I have to do post death or death on my own, oh well. Let's share life.