It's Your (My) Funeral

  So, I kind of phased out during Relief Society on Sunday and started planning my funeral in my head. Here's what I have so far, it's a little rough, I just banged it out after church:

1.) DO NOT BURY ME IN SOME FANCY EXPENSIVE BOX. Cremate me. Do whatever you want with the ashes, just don't come visit my rotting corpse in an expensive plot. That's weird. Also, if there are billions of people on this earth, they can't all be buried! There's not enough room! You should do that thing where you turn me into a tree. That's cool. I saw this thing online where they talked about how if a bunch of people did that, then cemeteries would be forests. Seriously, isn't that a good idea? If you do that, though, don't freak out if the tree dies. It's not symbolic of anything, trees just die sometimes. Plant another one if you want and pretend it's the same one.

2.) NO VIEWING. I'm super serious on this, guys. I'm still traumatized from the one viewing I went to as a kid, and I don't want that to be the last way everyone remembers me, with my eyes all sunken in and crap. Why would you want to see that, anyway? I don't care if you find it comforting in some weird way, I am not cool with you all staring at my corpse. Remember me as I was ALIVE.

3. ) No hymns at the funeral. I don't feel as strongly about this as the first two, but really, I'm just not into hymns. If you play "Til We Meet Again" I'm going to be a mad ghost. You don't want a mad ghost, trust me. Don't torture yourselves with that hymn, please. Have James or Andrew make a compilation of instrumental songs from some of my favorite video games (I know you're rolling your eyes, Mom, but I don't care. There's some good music in video games!). Y'know, some Final Fantasy X or VII, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Age. Not like the Chocobo Song or anything, the classy-sounding ones, guys. If James and Andrew are dead, then . . . Well, hopefully I'll update this before then.

4.) As for who gets what, Fay gets all my jewelry. She doesn't have to keep it if she doesn't want, no guilt, she can just choose her favorite pieces. Mom's going to give me the pink tourmaline ring Dad made when she dies, and that's actually a nice piece with some meaning, so Fay can have that. Lincoln . . . I dunno, I don't have any special trains stashed away. He can choose whatever he wants of mine. Kellie gets my beanie babies (or just one representational one if she wants. Or none. I don't care, I'm just trying to honor my promise to her from when I was 8). Everyone else can take what they want, give the rest to Goodwill. You don't need to hang on to my stuff or anything. What I hung on to due to sentimentality won't be sentimental to you, feel free to give it to Goodwill. OH, but keep the baby blessing dresses for the kids' kids someday. Don't throw those out, please.

5.) Burn my journals. Really, they're very boring, just a day-to-day account, they're not creative or funny or even that interesting, I promise. And a lot of people would be hurt because of stupid stuff I wrote when upset. I loved you all, I promise, I just vented a lot and you don't want to read it. If you can't bring yourself to burn them (though, really, you should), lock them away for my great-grandkids or something, people who didn't know me personally or would be offended by them. But, seriously, they're boring, I don't think even my descendents would want to read them.

6.) Something you COULD do at my funeral that I think would be fun would be to read excerpts from my blog, or facebook posts, or bits from my books or something. That's more personal to me than some talk we've all heard at every funeral ever about resurrection and stuff. You can throw it in at some point, like, "Hey, Julia believes in resurrection and so do 99% of people at this funeral, so that's cool, we'll see each other again someday, blah blah, now let's talk about something more interesting." OOH, also, if I'm not published, maybe print up some copies of the books I've worked really hard on so whoever wants to can read it. Not "Super", it sucks, but the Shadow book and How We Came to Quest are decent-ish. It would be nice if someone got to enjoy them. But, you know, remind people they are fantasy, so if they're not into that, don't read it just because they feel obligated.

7.) Sorry to keep harping about the funeral (wait, why am I apologizing? I should not have to keep apologizing beyond the grave!), but I want it small. Like, people who actually really knew me and loved me. Family and close friends. I don't want the big, impersonal kind with a bunch of people who barely knew me. Keep it intimate, the kind of thing I would like to go to in real life, with people I'm comfortable with. If there's someone that it would be awkward not to invite, I guess you can. But seriously, try to keep it small.

  That's what I got so far. Am I forgetting anything?