Can't Spell Funeral without Fun

“I bought land,” my dad picked up when I returned his missed call. “It’s waterfront!”

If you know my dad, such an announcement is not unexpected.  I likely rolled my eyes in response to just how on-brand this behavior was.  He flits from hobby to hobby with 100% commitment to the plot.  He has LARPed as a cyclist and a fly fisherman; he waits months on end to take delivery of fully outfitted cars and boats before swiftly moving on to the next. There were the times he obsessively collected sterling silver serveware (“This biscuit tin!”), Hermes dinnerware, and tiny Christofle espresso spoons.  I just figured he had been inspired by Gil Schafer’s coastal home or required some space for skeet shooting pursuits.

“Oh?” I responded insouciantly. 

“The cemetery just released additional plots. After these are sold, there will be no more.”

Jesus Christ. A salesman’s dream. A total sucker.

“I intended to buy two plots, but I ended up getting more. They’ll fit six of us, but twelve if we’re cremated.”  Unaffected by the macabre nature of the topic, he continued: “Green grassy hills overlooking the river. It’s beautiful! There’s room at the inn, if you all would like to join us!” He followed up with a texted photo:

A view to die for

There had been no service following my grandmother’s death last Fall, and in a twist of…. romance? serendipity?, my grandfather recently passed on the same date one year later. So the topic of a funeral was not entirely unexpected, but I was unprepared to consider my own afterlife accommodations.

I skated through life untouched by death for three and a half decades, but lately, it’s confronted me at every turn like an all-consuming realization that we are mere mortals. I find myself running quick math to approximate a person’s remaining time on earth when I learn his or her age. And the moment my body touches the seat of an airplane, my brain goes into overdrive taking inventory of my valuables and to whom they should be bequeathed. Mrs. Dalloway declared it “very, very dangerous to live even one day.” Imagine the level of Virginia Woolf’s fear navigating current times like a game of Frogger.

Maybe it tracks for my spooky Halloween-loving personality. You know that Vampire Weekend line, “A morbid streak runs through the whole of my family”? Like it’s a malady. One that makes it easy to become bogged down by the notion of the abrupt finality of death. One that requires constant opposition. Anyway, I felt totally validated after reading this interview with Natasha Lyonne in the Times last week. (She is, of course, brilliant in His Three Daughters on Netflix, if you haven’t seen it.)

The perk of such morbidity is the urgency it inspires to cross things off the list. And if you don’t possess such drive, perhaps Mary Shelley can ignite your flame. At the risk of this turning into AP English:

After many years of kicking the can down the road and using mental weakness as an excuse, I have finally signed up to volunteer at the children’s hospital, something I’ve been talking about doing for over a decade. I want to do the things I want to do. I want to travel to Stockholm and Tokyo. I want to be more patient, more kind, more positive. I want to be around people with morals. Don’t we all? Millennial women’s collective obsession first with Fleabag’s hot priest and now with Nobody Wants This’s Rabbi Noah makes me think yes.

Time to live (laugh, love).