What Do I Think About Death?

My maternal grandfather died in March of this year.

As is frequent with death, this was complex. He’d had an hemorrhagic stroke in early 2012, and suffered partial paralysis down his right side and aphasia, as is common. Though I’m not medically trained in any way short of a first-aid course, I personally think it was made more likely due to him having polio as a child, especially as he otherwise was always active and in good health. This is not to say it wouldn’t have happened had he not had polio or whatever. I guess I’m just musing on it because the stroke was a surprise to everyone.

His death was… less so. He’d proceeded to have a few more near the end of his life, and had been in and out of the hospital, so the last big one was very touch-and-go. He’d made it long enough that everyone got to visit, but was steadily less lucid and conscious. When he finally died, it was a terribly unfortunate relief. My mother spoke of consolation through restrained tears - he’d had the same reaction when his own mother had died, grief with the balm of the dead no longer suffering. No longer was he suffering, and he no longer needed my family’s care.

He was cremated, and we held a memorial for him some time later, after his wife took some time to catch her breath. She’d been a full-time carer for him, which was exhausting (and to be clear, he was usually exhausting before the stroke, too). It was a wonderful memorial. Well over a hundred people showed up, and it was certainly remarkable to see how many lives he’d touched. Every story that didn’t start with him would eventually encounter a variant on the phrase ”… and then Charlie came along…” followed by the knowing groans of everyone present.

The eulogy my father gave moved many people to tears, myself included. I spoke, and while I didn’t tell a story, I spoke of his mannerisms. The look in his eye when attention would drift away from him and he was just observing. I’d our eyes would meet, his brow would lift and he’d cock his head with an expression of “What’s next? What’cha say?”

It was, definitively, nice.

My paternal grandfather died in 2016.

He was a kind, soft spoken man who loved fishing and birds. The board game violence he was capable of was staggering. He may not have always won, but he always made sure whoever did earned it. I was less close to him, but it still hurt, mostly for the cliche of missed time.

His death was more straightforward, which made the grief greater, but easier to process. Passing in one’s sleep sure seems to be a good way to go about it. Coming together with my family, as one does at a funeral, was another nice experience. The awkward catching up, the variations of grief, the stunned disbelief at the priest attempting to use the occasion to guilt younger attendees into attending church more. While scandalous, it certainly gave us something to talk about, and felt like a fitting event for the kind of man who couldn’t help but find some non-food item in whatever he ordered when he went out. I had the worst potatoes of my life as part of the potluck. Those are the only potatoes I’ve ever eaten that I’ve disliked.

I will never forget the expression on my father’s face as he held the urn containing his father’s remains. It was bemused, surprised, and that’s probably what helped him hold it together in front of everyone. I don’t think he’d expected anyone to hold it, much less him, the youngest child, but once again, minor surprises were appropriate.

My great grandfather (maternal grandfather’s father) died in 2014.

This one wasn’t exactly a shock, though it wasn’t expected.

I was a pallbearer at the funeral. He was a large presence in the small town he’d lived in, and the procession was long indeed. Looking back through the hearse at all the stopped vehicles was another remarkable event. The words I spoke at the time, as a tender young man of 23, were of how many other people had measured themselves by him, and how that was a good way to get a measure of a man. He’d made it through 101 years, and had been a character through them all.

I’ve been to a few other funerals, but they were less personal, and few and far between.

They’re a common subject in media, which makes sense given the emotional weight invested in them and the things that cause them. I’ve thought about death a good bit. I believed in God for a time, and come from a not-heavily-but-definitely-Catholic family. I once feared death and what it could mean: good things if I was good, bad things if I was bad, you can’t clock out early or you didn’t get the good, the usual business.

I was shaped by life, as happens, and Christianity as a whole lost its hold on me. That meant I needed to figure this whole death thing out, and what it meant for me. What would I want in a funeral? What did I think happened after the bucket was thoroughly punted?

I figured out with a quickness that it didn’t mean much. I would be dead - what did I care? Not much I could do about it after the fact, and not much I can do to prepare, short of the legal stuff of my estate or whatever. I don’t know what happens after my brain stops, and nobody does. If they say they do, they are misinformed, however understandably, or lying. For the former, I don’t attach a value judgement to it. For the latter, shame.

I’ve still got a body, though. Something’s gotta happen to it. What do I want in a funeral?

I don’t give a shit.

Seriously. My ideal would be a sky burial, just give me completely back to nature. Logistically, I understand why I can’t - leaving bodies around where someone might get freaked out by them is an understandably bad idea, given that it’s not a cultural norm. I might joke around with being launched into space (Alistair Reynolds’s Revelation Space series of books has “Burial at C”, where a spaceship approached light speed and released the body in the ship’s current vector). I love my skeleton, so having it on display somewhere would be cool. I wouldn’t mind donating my body to science for utility purposes, but I know that can get sketchy sometimes.

In reality, what’s done with me will be up to whoever else it matters to.¹ I’m an organ donor, so all I ask is that I’m scooped clean of useful parts first.

I just do not give a shit.

That’s not to say funerals are unimportant.

Funerals are for the living.

I’m not gonna be around for mine. That’s kind of the whole deal. I’m not there.

Funerals are for the living to come together to grieve and share grief. They’re there to remember the life that was lived, to connect with one another, and receive the Great Reminder that none of us can outrun.

I believe it’s an important part of what we need to be people. It’s the contrast that makes things worth it. Life without death becomes empty. It needs that weight at the end.