Mike's Dream Funeral

Last weekend I attended the funeral of a friend who was much too young. The ceremony was done on short notice, it was extremely tasteful and did justice to the young man who had brought everyone together.
I then found myself thinking about what formalities I preferred to accompany my own demise.

First and foremost I realized that I only die once, and I want attendees in formal suits and dresses to commemorate this. This is no light-hearted, pre-teen birthday party.

Also, I want my iPod put on shuffle and played over loudspeakers. It is important to me that I get to choose the music, because if anyone plays something like "Bro hymn" or "Free Bird" at my service I will be forced to haunt them.

But of course, I thought most about the preservation of my remains.

My original plan was to be sent to a taxidermy where I would be stuffed and placed into a three-piece suit and fixed on a base that would allow me to stand upright. In addition to this I would have a bottle opener mounted into my right hand and a Zippo placed in my breast pocket.

Finally, I would be delivered to my best friend's house with a note that it was my dying wish for me to be placed in his kitchen. It is my sincere hope that he would comply out of respect for his dear friend's memory. And down the road when he is looking to open his beer or light his cigar, he would always be happy that I was there.

But the thought of his isolation after everyone else decided not to go to his place for drinks forced me to eclipse this idea with another.

Clearly, putting that much pressure on one person was unfair, so as a replacement I decided to break up the pressure into smaller portions and put it on everyone I know. My way of doing this is to be first cremated, and then put into a series of snow globes.

At some point I will make a long list of who exactly is going to receive these trinkets and they will be handed out to those in attendance, or sent to them by standard mail, because I think first-class would be pretentious.

And years after my death, hopefully, my loved ones will have little Mike-filled snow globes placed awkwardly on their desks. Eventually, some poor innocent person will walk by and give it a shake. At that point the recipient of the snow globe will get to yell at them and tell them that I was "resting."

Immediately following this will be an awkward moment in which the person will feel terrible, or think that the owner of the globe is officially the strangest person they know, either of which would be hilarious to me.

It may not be the most traditional thing to do, but traditions are slowly going by the wayside these days, so I figure why not take it all the way?