Funeral plans

I know exactly what I want done at my funeral, which I hope is many, many years away. The fact that I have the ceremony for my death already planned amuses and maddens E, as I have trouble planning for most things in life. For those interested, here are my instructions, should you find me dead on the side of the road:

I don't need to take up real estate when I'm dead, and anyway, they don't make cars, showers and chairs that are comfortable for tall people, so why should I excpect them to have extra long coffins? Cremation, please.

I'm Catholic, no matter how hard I try to deny it. The religious part of my upbringing informs a bigger part of my life then I care to admit. So yeah, I'd like a priest there, quoting a few choice passages from the Bible. No Rosary, though. It's the closest thing to a meditative ritual I have seen in Catholicism, but it just doesn't feel right to me. Too much droning, and I invariable start laughing half way through.

For God's sake, play "Hallelujah." The Leonard Cohen version, not the Jeff Buckley version. I know, everyone loves that song now, especially after Shrek. But I swear, I loved it long before that movie, even before Basquiat.

Here is the new part, added today thanks to if only [dot] org. At the end of the ceremony, please read the following poem:

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I���m dead.

As the processes of earth
strip off the colour of the skin:
take the brown hair and blue eye

and leave me simpler than at birth,
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon entered the cold sky.

Of my skeleton perhaps,
so stripped, a learned man will say
���He was of such a type and intelligence,��� no more.

Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore

the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.

Time���s wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.

Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion,

not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled,
leisurely arrive at an opinion.

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I���m dead.

Oh yeah, afterwards, please have a wake wherein everyone gets very drunk.