New Marketing in Death and Mourning

I'm not sure why I had the presence of mind to start thinking of my funeral arrangements in such detail and well before the average age of death for a white female. But more and more I am feeling like it is an important task. Perhaps I am a little controlling. Yes, I also have some concerns about the lack of crowd I could draw. A positive is that I am planning some storytelling, a "best of" for entertainment purposes that could sway some in.

Now I am thinking of a raffle. People love believing they can win something even if it is associated with death. This darkish raffle could get some strangers to fill seats.

The reality is I have friends and family all over the country, their bank accounts are not what they expected due to the stock market, and people in general don't want to bother anyone or be bothered. This has to lead emptier, more lonesome, and sadder funerals.

Any ideas on how to fill funeral seats will be appreciated. A carnival themed funeral...who wouldn't want to mourn over an elephant ear on a Ferris wheel?

Tales from the grave

I was giving Dan some additional instructions for my funeral the other day. I was including ANOTHER story that should be told about me after I am gone.

I got worried that I had so many stories I wanted people to hear, that maybe we needed to be better organized. It occurs to me the stories could be arranged by subject, that way people could come in to hear what they were most interested in without it taking up their entire day. The subjects might be things like post office, public transportation, dreams, mental health, celebrity sightings, the homeless, and travel disasters.

At this point it occurs to Dan he might forget a story or two and it would help if I write them down. Now these stories will have a home under the label eulogy, and I can relax again about my funeral plans.

The Art of Obituaries

My favorite part of the reading the paper are the obituaries. I like when the paper really gives the obituaries the space they deserve with several paragraphs, a picture, and even a family crest. I’ve asked Dan to create a Stewart – Steinberg family crest. I can picture the Dysfunctional Bungalow Crest flying proudly, yet faded and tattered.

For one summer in college I worked as an intern at a small Jewish newspaper in Cincinnati. A short stubby guy seated next to me was assigned the obituaries and he hated it. Personally, I was envious of his important task, but if I it brought up he could rant for 45 minutes about how the editor was overlooking his oozing talent for hard-core journalism.

I love the details in obituaries like: the sports teams of which the recently deceased were fans of, heirloom rose gardens, church pie contests, hand-sewn quilt collections donated to inner-city children, runner-up as River Raisin Queen, 1926. These are the fine points in life that can be overlooked until the end.

I should write my obituary now instead of leaving it up to a resentful newspaper writer who already feels undervalued and does not understand the art of an obituary. A few well-placed exaggerations like my nickname, "spark plug" and favorite hobbies like amateur-anesthesiology and sacred-ground-architecture would make it a must-read.

Friends would shake their heads with sincere regret and confusion, “I really didn’t know her…why didn’t I spend more time her? Here I paid full price on anesthesia at the hospital last week, and I could of gotten a deal from ole' spark plug.”