In previous iterations of the #30DaySongChallenge, I’ve answered this prompt about “a song you want played at your funeral” before– see here for my 2015 answer, and here for my 2011 answer– but, to be honest, that was before I really started thinking seriously about my own funeral. For the last few years, I’ve been teaching teaching a course on Medical Ethics almost every semester and, over time, it’s become more and more focused on end-of-life issues. As it turns out, college-aged students today have significantly older parents (and grandparents) than college students of previous generations, so most of them have had some up-close-and-personal experience with the excruciating, heartbreaking, and morally ambiguous decisions that have to made by loved ones of those at the end of life, who might be suffering from terminal illness, dementia, poverty, or some other variety of incapacity.
I’m getting older now, and someone who has been burdened with more than my fair share of truly awful genetic conditions, the average human life-span of 79 years, should I make it that far, is almost certainly going to be achieved at a considerable (financial and existential) cost for me. I think I have a healthy amount of sangfroid– humor, even!– about this fact. My loved ones do not.
Perhaps because of my health conditions, perhaps because of my disposition, I find it really healthy and therapeutic to talk about end-of-life issues openly, honestly, and frequently. The fact of the matter is that we are all living sicker and longer. As we near out deaths, all of our lives are going to be more miserable (and expensive) than anyone could have possibly imagined. When you couple together the immense technological capabilities of its health care system and the gross deficiencies of its health insurance coverage, the United States may very well be among the worst countries in which to die in the modern world.
Yes, of course, you can die a miserable death elsewhere in the world– by famine, war, or disease– but nowhere else in the world does there exist a legal and institutional infrastructure so committed to prolonging your end-of-life suffering as there is in the good ol’ US of A. So, this past year, I decided to have my students complete an “End of Life” assignment as a part of my Medical Ethics course, which required them to fill out a (modified) Advance Directive form and to write their own obituary.
THIS IS A THING THAT YOU ALL SHOULD DO POST HASTE.
If you’re feeling reluctant about talking to your loved ones about kicking the bucket, I recommend visiting the Five Wishes website, which is really helpful not only for essential end-of-life advanced planning, but also for thinking about the whole endeavor in minimally scary ways.
Okay, back to my funeral. Here’s my pick for the (really, “a”) song I want played when I go to the mattresses. It’s Jesse Winchester‘s “Brand New Tennessee Waltz”:
I love this song as a “funeral” song because it’s mainly about loving something as it’s literally walking away. In fact, it’s about loving something after it’s already gone. They say that funerals are for the living, and of course they are, but I’d like to think of my funeral as one last chance to say something to the people I loved. Something like this:
But I left Tennessee in a hurry, dear
In the same way that I’m leaving you
Because love is mainly just memories
And everyone’s got him a few
So when I’m gone, I’ll be glad to love you
FWIW, I have expressed my end-of-life wishes in very explicit terms to all of the people nearest and dearest to me. I also have an incredibly detailed Advance Directive on my laptop in a unprotected file conveniently labeled “Advance Directive.” I hope it won’t ever come to this, but should I end up in a hospital, I’ve tried to protect myself against the cruelties of that institution as much as possible.
My preferred existential exit, as everyone I love knows, is via “Pudding Party” (a la S2E12 of Grace and Frankie). Don’t worry, I’ve already secured dear friends (thanks, Adriel and Shannon!) to deliver the coup de grâce pudding, so all the rest of you can just sit back and enjoy the pre- and post-grâce festivities.
And there damn well BETTER be some festivities!