Stardust
Our fate – dust to dust.
A welcome end, when our dust
is the dust of stars!
I would like to have a simple funeral.
October is my birthday month and this year I seem to have focused more than usual on my inevitable end. This could be because my first grandchild, a beautiful baby girl, was born a week before my birthday. Her arrival led me to consider deeply my time on Earth and my eventual departure. I hope my leaving this plane does not occur anytime soon, but just in case, I imagined my funeral and decided to put my wishes on paper.
I would like to be laid out in a simple coffin suitable for cremation. I do not need steel or real mahogany. Let us save those for building strong homes for the living. A pretty coffin/casket made of eco friendly materials, complemented by a spray of colorful blooms will do. There is no need for a multitude of large wreaths. I would ask that any funds earmarked for an excess of flowers be used to enhance the lives of the living. A donation of books to the local library in my memory, or adopting a nursing home and sending cards to the residents, or planting a tree would be my preference.
Sincerity over eloquence in any speeches or sermons that are given would be my choice. I would like family and friends to share memories of how I made them laugh, or of something I did to make them feel happier and lift their spirit, or of any way I helped to spread some measure of joy and light when I walked this Earth. Even just thinking of our lives together and remembering the good would please my soul.
I would like to be cremated and have my ashes placed in a biodegradable urn which will be immersed in flowing water and be dissolved. This will ensure that the atoms and other particles that comprise my physical body will more easily find their way into all the oceans and shores of this world and become part of life everywhere.
If my loved ones would like to speak to me after my passing, they will find me in the air around them, and in the raindrops, and in the whispering leaves. I will be there in spirit and I will know.
My physical body will return to the components that were its original building blocks; the atoms and subatomic particles will continue to be part of the cycle of life all around us, and someday they will once again be part of this cycle on an even more grand scale, for eventually I will return to the firmament from whence I came, and again become what we all once were – stardust!