I’m not great at keeping in touch with people. I have the best of intentions, I really think I do. But I also never know if people actually want to hear from me. So I tend to not reach out for fear of the other person saying, “Oh great. What does he want?”
It also has to do with the fact I hate talking on the phone. I’m a texter at heart. I don’t think I wouldn’t be in contact with most people if it weren’t for text. When email first came around, I was so excited. Here was a way to keep in touch, faster than regular mail, but it still felt like you were sending a letter. I still wanted to talk to people, just not “talk” to people.
The one exception to this was my mother. For one, she was my mother and I really had no choice. Two, she died before texting was a thing. And three, that woman loved the phone. God, how she loved to talk. But to her credit, she didn’t dawdle when talking to me. She called every day but it was the fastest “How are you? You need anything? Love you, Bye” phone call you could have. She just wanted to be in touch. By this point, all her children were spread across the country and she wanted to know how we were, if we were alive, if we needed anything. She was a good one. To be fair, she could also be a roaring hellcat with fangs and a fiery tongue when she wanted to be. But she loved me fiercely and everyone needs that from at least one person.
So my reticence to reach out was the reason I found myself doing an obituary search for a friend of mine from high school. I had not heard from them for some time, and while we weren’t day-to-day texters, we did keep in touch and I enjoyed our conversations immensely. I wanted to reach out, but then I thought, maybe they were not reaching out because they were glad to not talk to me.
Insecurities are hard to overcome.
I put my friend’s name out on the internet followed by “obituary” and held my breath. To my great relief, I did not find them. I did, however, find several obituaries for the same name. There were enough differences in them that I was able to suss out they were not my friend’s obit. But that got me to thinking — is there an obituary under the name Tim Burns? Turns out there are a whole lot of them. Granted it is a common enough name, but there were an awful lot of obits for my Tim Burns, what seemed an inordinate amount to be honest. This didn’t make me feel any better for a lot of reasons.
For one, I don’t want to die. I know on an intellectual level, it will happen, but I am hoping it is off in the future, like way in the future, way way in the future. I kind of like living. I have 10 more seasons of Suits to get through and a list of YouTube videos a mile long. Plus I’ve not mastered inclusions in my sourdough. Someone recently requested a lemon zest/blueberry bread and I haven’t even started figuring it out yet. I want to live long enough that the hair in my ears is longer than the hair on my head. Come to think of it, I’m bald. sh*t… Okay, I want to live long enough to be able to write a Substack without curse words in it. That’ll be a long time at this rate.
Another reason? I don’t want an obituary. I am not a fan of them. They seem so insubstantial. And so very… nice.
“Rosemary Dawkins died peacefully in her sleep after 87 years on this earth. Blessed with three children, she was the bookkeeper at Allan’s Auto Parts for 50 years…”
Gag me.
Even the good ones that are honest seem too much of… something.
It’s hard to define, but I think it comes down to just not wanting that much attention turned upon myself. I realize that sending out a newsletter twice weekly is a desire for attention. And yes, I also realize I’ll be dead, so I’ll have very little say in the matter. But the idea of an obituary listing the highlights of my life in a column in a newspaper or online seems very weird to me.
And to get it out there now, and set the record straight, I do not want a funeral. Most of my close friends know this about me: I do not like funerals, don’t want to have my own, nor do I want to go to theirs. Let’s face it, they are creepy and depressing as f*ck. And, once again, I do realize I’ll be dead. And yada yada yada, a funeral isn’t for the dead, it’s for the living. A chance for people to get together and mourn the loss of someone they cared about.
Well, I say to hell with all of that. If I die, and someone decides to have a funeral for me, do not go. Instead, go to a bar, get drunk. Or get laid. Or go to a Red Sox game. Better yet, just eat dinner with your family, watch TV and enjoy your evening.
My mother always said she did not want a funeral but they had one anyway. I relented and went because my brother told me I had to and well, I do what my brothers tell me to do. I’m just built that way. But I hated every goddamned minute of it. A bunch of well-meaning friends and family dressed up and sat in a church that as far as I knew, she had never been in. Maybe she had, I don’t know. As I’ve said, we didn’t talk much on the phone. But I do know she didn’t want a funeral. But they gave her one anyway, and I was a right and ripe asshole during the whole affair.
And I do not feel bad about it one bit.
No, when I die — if you are with me when it happens — please pull up to the funeral home, take any identification from my body, then push my carcass out the door and drive like a bat out of hell.
You can even keep the cash in my wallet.
Thanks for indulging me,
~ Tim
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