Funerals

I have little experience with funerals. As for my own, I think I'd like a Chinese-style tree burial, where they cremate you and plant a tree over your ashes.  I like the idea of having a living memorial.

You know that music they used to play at the start of the TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents?  The original version of it was Charles Gounod's "Funeral March for a Marionette."

In the Middle East, a bereaved family can hire a professional wailer to do the loud lamenting that they're ashamed to do!  Those women can wail up a storm.

Buddhists write messages to the dead on pieces of paper that they then burn.  I like that idea...

W.H. Auden wrote the poem "Funeral Blues":

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.