Aren’t we strange
little creatures?
We live; we die.
It happens that fast,
like a semicolon’s pause...
Estranged family, former friends,
& neighbors who never spoke to you
gather in an ornate funeral parlor
with sparkling chandeliers,
thick, soft, neutral carpet, and
black suited, paid employees.
Soft, morbid music is piped in...
Soon-to-be-dead flowers
are covering the fancy,
expensive, satin-lined coffin
in which your corpse is stuffed
wearing clothing, well, you would
never be caught dead in.
Why dress up corpses?
Put them in comfortable clothes!!!
Why are these people here?
To celebrate your life??
You’re dead. You don’t know
who’s at this gathering of gawkers.
Why, when you were alive, didn’t
they tell you of their love, friendship
and caring concern...and give you living flowers,
red Rose bushes & Blueberry plants?
Or apologize for the ugly scars
they inflicted on your tender
body, soul and spirit?
Why didn’t they speak
of their love for you or
once say sincerely: “Are you hurting?”
Or, “I’m sorry you are in pain.”
“What can I do for you?”
So few words holding such power—-
To the living, of course.
Have mercy, breathing people
with wildly beating hearts—-
Make peace with your loved ones
while they are still alive!
They will not see you or your
crocodile tears once they are
forever in that box,
buried in the
cold, hard,
eternally silent,
unforgiving earth.
~Marion
PSALM 69:29 (ESV)
let your salvation, O God, set me on high!
6 comments:
Love this, Marion!!
Back before we made the decision to get cremated, my husband always said he'd come back and haunt me if i didn't bury him in blue jeans and a pocket tee. Now we just want our ashes tossed into the pond. ;)
LOL! Kelly, I agree with him. We plan to be cremated, too. I have a fear of small, dark, tight spaces six feet underground. I’ve been to over a dozen funerals (two double funerals of my cousins who were killed by a drunk driver) so I know the drill: those stupid dress clothes!!!! It kills me to see a man in a suit who never wore a suit! Thanks for stopping by. xo
I still use dozens of wooden hangers from which once hung the clothes that dead men were buried in.
Oftentimes, though, women's burial clothes were selected at the funeral home, in which case they wouldn't have backs, and of course few people of either gender were buried in shoes.
Snow, you tease! Where’d you get those hangers? I knew that about the dresses because, being an avid reader, I read it in a book where the main character’s family owned a funeral home and lived above it.
I hope you are doing well. It’s muggy and warm here...at least until tomorrow. I hope you have a HappyThanksgiving. I wish I lived close enough to come cook you & Peggy a Southern dinner. I’m thankful for our long friendship. Even though we don’t see eye to eye politically or religiously, I love you as an amazing human being and am thankful for our friendship and I pray for you every day. xo
Starting in my teens, I worked at three funeral homes, including Wright and Fergurson, which was the largest one in Mississippi. On one occasion, Peggy went with me to pick up a corpse in Lafayette. We stopped at her Granny's in Hammond on the way back, and left the corpse (in a station wagon) under the carport. One of her nieces didn't believe we really had a corpse so she went out to look, and came back in very upset.
We don't eat turkey, so the main course would have to be Tofurkey, and we actually prefer non-meat-fat cornbread dressing made with thick-grind polenta instead of regular cornmeal. It will just be Peggy and me, as always. More people would be nice, so you could add that.
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