My Lengthy Eulogy
or
(A[n] [Un]fortunate Series of Failures)
by
Andre Stonehill
Started in 2017
Chapter 1
The Funeral
I hate funerals. But then again, who doesn’t?
But this one is different – IT IS MY OWN.
Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. I am prepared to die.
Wait! I am dead, but my name is not – you know. I am Daniel Hosea Johnstone. I died four days ago at the premature age of fifty-five. Unknown cause. The doctors said it was a heart attack. But that’s what they always say when they really don’t have an answer. Now my body lies in a beautiful casket, only because I had a decent life insurance policy that allowed my wife to splurge on the final remembrance details for the rest of the family. Oh, what a mess. Parents aren’t supposed to bury their kids. Everybody knows that. But here they are, along with my grandmother of ninety-four. She’s just lingering in a painful existence, while I am enjoying bliss with my wonderful Savior in Paradise. Go figure. But then again, this is not her story. That is another book. She certainly told me many stories of her life that could fill a book. However, this is my story.
The casket will be closed soon, and the only thing left will be photos and memories. The body will eventually decay, but nobody will be ruminating on that gory fact. My wife and daughter, and the rest of the family take one last look before the undertaker closes the history book. The tears shed will show how much adoration, devotion, and affection that one garnered in life. It will be a fitting end to one chapter in their lives as well. After all, stories aren’t co-written, only intertwined, like the multi-colored strands in a finely woven rug.
Nowadays, we don’t have normal funerals. We have memorial services, where many people talk about their remembrances of the deceased. Where hardly anything negative is spoken. Where the roastee is made to look almost like Mother Theresa. Funny, how our friends’ love covers a multitude of sins. 1
I hate funerals. Not because they are sobering, but because people tell such lies. The sobering only happens in part due to the sad reminder that death will eventually come to all.2 The other part is glossed over. Most people think they are ready to cross over to the other side. They want paradise, like everybody else. Nobody really wants to go to hell to live in torment forever. They all want that blissful existence with no pain, worries, or heartache. But why should God let us into his paradise? Nobody seems to ponder that question. Oh, sometimes that sentiment comes out of the closet at funerals; but it is quickly forgotten, when everyone gets back to one’s normal routine of life – life devoid of their loved one who just left this plain of existence.
But I digress into ruminations of philosophy. And why not? I am the dead one who knows a few more things about plains of existence, now that I am in one of them I am currently experiencing, apart from my faith in it. After all, faith is only what we patiently hope for, not what we already have. So eerily enough, I am seeing things from two different worlds at the moment, as I watch my old friends and family mingling in the Rose Room.