Background
I've kept a journal throughout my life of situations and people I've encountered, and I'm sharing them in random order.
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June 26, 2019
On Celebrating Life
We have just returned home from another wake, our fourth since mid-May. We're getting to "that age" now where this will occur ever more frequently. I feel melancholy, and that, in turn, leads me to feel exasperated. It did not have to be this way.
Last October, my friend Gail died after a valiant two-year battle against non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. But instead of a wake, she'd stipulated that she wanted a Celebration of Life ceremony.
Over one hundred people who knew and loved her gathered in her house. Her cousin had songbooks printed up with lyrics for the songs we'd chosen to sing, and I had the delight of leading us in singing them.
We chose the following:
Friends I Will Remember You (John Denver) because it seemed, since it was one of Gail's all-time favorites, like a perfect opening number;
On the Road Again (Willie Nelson) because Gail was a world traveler;
Cast On Baby (to the tune of Carly Rae Jepson's Call Me Maybe) in recognition of Gail's prowess as a 'knit wit';
Imagine (John Lennon) to honor Gail's spiritual views about life;
You'll Be In My Heart (Phil Collins) because these were the words Gail would say to all of us before ending any conversation, whether in person, on the phone, or even online;
All You Need Is Love (The Beatles). This was Gail's "One Truth of Life." She insisted that everything else was just 'background noise.'
We ended with Andrew Gold's Thank You For Being My Friend.
As a special, personal tribute to her, because Gail was someone who could never be 'filled up,' --never enough friends, or adventures, or sewing/knitting/quilting projects, or books, or trips-- I sang Never Enough from The Greatest Showman, a movie we'd seen together.
Between each song, her friends took the microphone and shared vignettes pertinent to the lyrics. Most were funny, a few were tender, and several were eye-opening in a wonderful Oh-That-Sounds-Like-Her way. Not one was sad.
It was a joyous, wonderful farewell to an extraordinary, happy, truly wonderful woman. There were some twinges of sadness, of course, because we missed her. But we were able to see, as one enormous unit, how special she was by virtue of how many lives she'd enriched.
By contrast, at each of these recent wakes my husband and I attended, we stood in line for over an hour to pass a casket or an urn and recite condolences to family members with hollow eyes and tear-stained cheeks. There was no joy to be had for these lives that had been lived, only sorrow in their absences.
Myself, I'm going to follow Gail's lead. I want my friends' final memory of me to be the same as my life has been --filled with joy and music. It will be my parting gift. Literally.
