The Dirt Nap – And After?

Now That I’ve Got Your Attention

I’ve just learned that my husband has a file folder of stories to share at my funeral!

Heartwarming and amusing stories, no doubt, but he won’t tell me what they are, so I guess I’ll have to be there to find out. This is not an entirely appealing prospect, no matter how gratifying it might be hearing my friends and acquaintances chuckle at my foibles and amen at his recitation of my virtues. Surely it will only be virtues recited. No grieving husband would remember faults at such a time. Or dwell on them if he did. Would he?

I’ve only been, at most, to a dozen funerals in my life. Not many for 75 years. So unless things pick up smartly in coming years (and for the sake of my family and friends, I hope they don’t!), my own will make it a baker’s dozen. Or perhaps more aptly under the circumstances, an undertaker’s dozen. The only undertaker I’ve ever known personally – and he was “ex” by then, gone on to ventures in which his clients were not quite such silent partners – termed the stage of “life” with which he then dealt “the dirt nap.” Not surprisingly, it’s a phrase that has stuck with me ever since.

The assumption with the folder of funeral notes, of course, is that I’ll be going first – by no means a certainty, though I will allow as how it may be a hope some days (very few, on balance, surely) depending on how the virtues balance the faults that particular day.

It’s something of a shock to realize that others have begun to plan for my demise – and not just in an abstract way, but with folders. Sure, I made a will, but not because I thought I’d really ever need it. It’s just something responsible people do, and so I did it – mostly in a wan effort to convince others (and myself) that I am “responsible people” too. And as to the “do not resuscitate” order, and the “cremation of remains” directive, and all the rest: the less said about them, the better. And the less thought.

But, of course, others have thought of my death, just as I’ve thought of theirs. Thinking about that final step for others, even the near and dear, is just part of observing life, especially by the time we’ve observed so many decades of it. Perhaps it’s a way of starting the grief process early to help ease the shock when the time comes, so maybe it even makes evolutionary sense.

Thinking about it FOR OTHERS, that is. But for ourselves? Realizing that is quit another kettle of fish. (FYI, I’ve never written “another kettle of fish” before, and I promise never to do so again.)

Perhaps my perplexity is not so much with the actual death part, as with the not being here anymore that it implies. I confess that some days, especially after sleepless nights, I already feel as though I’m only half here. So I sort of understand when other people seem to respond to me as though I’m “not all there.” But to be “not there at all?!” Oh my, how can I grasp that without going completely off my rocker? (“Off my rocker?” Never again!)

We spend a lifetime as though (even the unselfish among us, I’m convinced, though I wouldn’t claim to be one of them ) we’re the center of the world – and we are the center of at least our own world. How could it be otherwise? Then somewhere along the way, most of us realize (certain politicians perhaps excluded) that somehow the world is going to keep spinning on without us as its center when we’re gone. Responsible people don’t actually say it – Le monde, c’est moi, to paraphrase – but can I be the only one who deep down feels that way?

If a world there be without me, does it exist? Well, of course it doesn’t – FOR ME. This is not a condition which even the existentialists can help me with. I’ll need a new philosophy to grapple with that. Perhaps Non-existentialism?! That’s getting rather deep for my limited philosophical skills, however.

There was a time when I sank deep into the bog of genealogy, though I like to think it wasn’t just so I could strut before folks who had no ancestors of their own. (Yes, we genealogists sometimes seem to forget that everyone has ancestors, even when their trees are not leafed out, and that there’s not much more boring to other people than our begets.) I tell myself that I traced back to give myself a sense of orientation in the world – and it did bring some comfort, if nothing else, to one old queer Texas liberal to find that “my people” had been here a long, long time (take THAT some of you carpetbagger Texas politicians, and some of you almost-just-off-the-boat national ones too!), and so I have as much right to be here as anyone. I’m not saying more, but just as much.

Of those ancestors, I never met any beyond my parents. The others were all gone by the time I came – except for my father’s father, though he was “estranged” and never mentioned, which amounted to the same. They were all already just names on paper – a few generations further back, not even that – though they all culminated in ME, which was the really important thing about them. Back then, I never thought how shocked they might have been, could they have known that’s what they would become: my ancestors, names on paper – they, with their own lives as the centers of their worlds. And, back then, I certainly never thought that’s all that I’d become someday too.

In the big picture it’s good, of course, that we get out of the way after our expiration date. Otherwise the world would get over cluttered with us decrepit relics of past times. It may be a plan; it may not. Either way, it’s the way it is. I’m not disputing that.

But what still perplexes me is that “not being here” thing. Even though I know it’s the way it will be, how do I get my head around that? Some nights, as I think about it in those wee hours, it’s a thought almost too close to the cliff.

They say we’re not really dead as long as we’re remembered. I’ve said it myself about friends who are gone: Claudia, Reed, Fern, past lovers, others. Unless I’m the last leaf, I suppose I’ll be remembered too, but not for long. All who remember me will soon enough not be here either. And then?

Then, only a name on a piece of paper – or a computer screen these days. And no one will even be looking me up, since I will be nobody’s ancestor.

Which brings us back to that file folder, and what it might contain. News flash, Husband! I have stories to tell at your funeral too. Though they’re not in a folder, only in my head, which I realize is a perilously porous pot to put them in – so I may be borrowing that folder idea from you. I’m not going to tell you what’s in it, but keep in mind, I may not be going first. It may be your funeral guests who hear stories of your foibles, faults, VIRTUES. So let’s make a deal: VIRTUES only. What do you say? And if the deal gets broken at the end? HAUNTING may ensue.

But what a relief that would be, come to think of it! Not completely “not here” after all!! Even if only still around as a HAINT, but who’s quibbling? So let the FAULTS pour forth!!!