Apocrypha

As I write this, I am still alive. I won’t say well, nor even in my right mind since both sound a bit presumptuous for this time of life. But I am motivated, perhaps provoked is a better word, by having gone to too many funerals, and self-centered though this may sound, relating each of them to my own instance. Plus, I probably have more friends in the cemetery looking up than on the outside looking in. 

Rudy Giuliani once said that his father told him that attendance at weddings was optional, but funerals were obligatory. I kind of agree with him, but I wonder if you don’t reach a limit. At any rate I feel compelled to jot down a few guidelines for when my own bones have to be interred. 

Paraphrasing C.S. Lewis, which approximates a sacrilege in itself, I am a very ordinary layman of the United Methodist Church, not especially “high,” nor especially “low,” nor especially anything else. But out of respect for my wife and her family of six ordained ministers, as well as my own sainted mother and father, I assume a church service. 

First comes the gathering music. Well, I like music, wake up in the morning with a tune in my head, and, to the consternation of Ethel and anyone within earshot, hum or whistle it the rest of the day. So, I have a list of hymns, old timers, that I’d leave to the judgment of Julia Morgan, who agreed a long time ago to play for my funeral. And I’d leave the singing to the congregation rather than a choir of angels or a soloist auditioning for the Met. What I’d really like is the original Goldsmith Singers, but they went the way with our grand old director Ernie Justice. Pity. 

After the music would come the scripture readings and the eulogy. I’d leave the scriptures to Dr. Mathison with only one request that my mother gave me as a stripling: