I’ve had the occasion, more often than I have wanted to lately, to think about being remembered. The permanent kind.

Two friends have passed recently, and the experience of death as an adult in California vastly differs from my experience of death growing up in Massachusetts.

I grew up in an Irish-Italian Catholic community, which is to say that more times than most of my friends from other places was spent attending wakes (or viewings, as I’ve heard them called). Someone you knew (or more likely your parents knew)—and we’re using knew very loosely here, it was often someone’s third cousin you met one time at a backyard party one Fourth of July—was being waked at one of the handful of familiar local funeral homes. Everyone in the family would go, dressed up nicer than a regular school day, pay their respects, and hobnob with the others doing the same. Old people, most of whom I’ve come to realize were then the age I am now, would tell you how much you’ve grown since the last time you saw them and ask if you remembered them. You’d smile politely, or as politely as you could muster to avoid a parental pinch to the arm fat, and let the old men kiss your cheek. Well, that’s where it was supposed to land. Then you’d go out to dinner at one of the local Italian restaurants, where you would again bump into many of the same hobnobbers.

It was so routine that death almost didn’t feel real. Funerals were like a super goth-themed party that happened on the regular.

There were only two things that could make it real real. 

1. The Wailers. Not the band. A professional, a hired mourner.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjqbxq/the-women-who-crash-funerals-to-loudly-cry

Wailers provided the soundtrack of mourning, and let me tell you, Stephen King’s got nothing on those people. It was mostly women. They were bloody terrifying. The sounds they made gave the funeral parlor its haunting ambience. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that their echoes are heard at night when no one is there.

2. When it was actually someone you knew. A grandparent, an aunt or uncle, a parent, maybe a close family friend. It was (I suppose it still is) customary to wait in line to kneel before the body and pray. Prayer hasn’t really ever been my jam, so I usually just thought about the person for an “acceptable” amount of time while staring at the waxy figure before me to see if they were breathing.

Those two sensory elements hung with you longer than you wanted, no matter how hard you tried. There are still some images seared into my brain matter. 

Since I’ve lived in California, I have been to considerably less of that type of death gathering. And I’m thinking, for me, that’s a streak I’d like to continue. 

People have passed, and there have been wakes and funerals I should have gone to. One I distinctly remember trying to go to, but obligation succumbed to fear, and the car pointed itself in the opposite direction. I just wasn’t ready. Others who have passed either opted more for celebrations of life,  a repass (which was a new term to me), or some other gathering honoring their memory.

Most recently, I went to a “let’s fill the house with love,” and honestly, driving there, I was terrified. I had no idea what I was walking into, and I couldn’t yet comprehend the reality of what was coming. It was heartbreakingly lovely. I think if it were up to me (and we all know how the universe laughs at our plans), that’s what I’d want. One last wild party on the way out.

That’s the way I want to remember the people I love. That’s how I want them to remember me.

No one knows me as a corpse, and frankly, if that was something they wanted to know, we would very likely not be friends. I’m not a headstone. I was adamant about my father not being cremated, but I was the first family member to decide the cemetery wasn’t for me. I don’t feel him there. I don’t have memories with him there. I feel more connected to him at Fenway Park than at his graveside.

The thing is, when people pass, there are so many traditions and beliefs that the living project onto the process that are more for them than the person they are supposedly honoring. Though whoever came up with the idea of having everyone kneel over their corpse and stare at them really could’ve used some therapy. Thanks for the trauma.

If I’m fortunate enough to have a heads up on when I’m going to go, then I want to be there for the party. If my fate is more sudden, then honor me in a way I would have enjoyed. (For the record, a giant party where I’m the center of attention and people make speeches––not what I’m talking about. Some people would absolutely love that—I am not one of them.) I’m saying, keep it weird. 

Wear stupid costumes to a bar on a Tuesday and hoist a drink in my honor. Relish in the stares from the normies as you interrupt their weekday melancholy. Dance around a beach bonfire and write my name in the sand, only to be lost to the high tide. Institute a weekly Office Dance Party and play my favorite terrible songs. Go to a concert of an artist I love that you can’t stand. Rent a cabin in the woods and sit around reading books and drinking wine together. Sing terrible karaoke. Take a boxing class. Visit a dude ranch. Have a frosting bake-off. Throw the most massive cookie party yet!

That’s how I want to be remembered.

(Or I’ll come back and haunt you! Just kidding… I’m haunting you all either way. We’ll be roommates! IYKYK)