I realize this is going to sound morbid, but I look at the obituaries from my hometown newspaper on a weekly basis. Even though I don't know nearly as many people there as I used to, occasionally I'll see that someone I grew up with has died - a teacher, Sunday School teacher, classmate, etc.
I started looking at some of the names last week (the ones with nicknames like "Tater" and "Dood" always get me; I've asked the bride to include a name like that in my obituary when I die, just for fun) to see if I recognized any of them. Then I looked at the hours of visitation. It's usually for about 2 hours, with another hour for the service. That's 3 hours. And it's really not even 3 hours, because the visitation is more like an in-and-out kind of thing. If the line's not too long, the person visiting may only be there for 15-20 minutes. And alot of times, if you go to the visitation you may not go to the funeral service.
So I got to thinking about this whole thing. If funerals are supposed to be a celebration of someone's life, why are they so short? Think about birthday parties you may have gone to in the past. You're there for usually an hour or so, sometimes longer depending upon how good the food and company is.
Maybe there need to be funeral planners out there like they have party planners. They take care of the food, the guest list and all the amenities. Need someone to watch the kids while you visit with the dearly departed's family? Send them out back to play on the inflatible jumping castle. Just come from work and you're starving? Go through the carved meat line with your choice of roast beef or turkey, slap the meat on some sliced sourdough, add some spicy mustard and you're good to go. Got a story about the deceased? See the videographer and he'll record your amusing anecdote.
If you're reading this and you think I'm crazy (those of you who know me probably made that call years ago), just think about it again. Yes, there are circumstances when you wouldn't want a jumpy-thing out back for the kids. But there are times when you actually want to celebrate a person's life. And it's difficult to do much celebrating in 15-20 minutes.
Maybe I need to patent this idea.....
2 comments:
All the funerals I've attended seemed to last forever. There is the visitation before, the funeral, going to the cemetary, and then there is usually food etc. In all, probably a good 3-4 hours.
There's a lot of Pee Wee's, Boogers, Big Mama....I'm an obit reader too. A day aint a day without reading who up and died.
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