h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As a pre-teen, I was altar boy at the funerals of both of my father's parents and his baby sister. I also served in this role for at least a dozen funerals of community members.

In later years, I was pall-bearer for my mother's mother, my father-in-law's mother, another of my father's sisters, and a complete stranger ( a military funeral ).

And still military related, I served in the honour guard of perhaps 5 military funerals. No one that I knew, fortunately, but seriously heart breaking and difficult to stand like a carving of granite while the surviving family is totally distraught.

And somewhat related . . .

I have been very familiar with death and funerals since perhaps the age of 4 years old. A few times, I have been entirely surprised to be with people well into their 30s who had never attended a single funeral. They varied from confusion as to what to do, what to say, to completely terrified to attend proof that lives do end.

Pall bearer and funeral-arranger (alongside my brother) for my father so far.



The saddest I've had to deal with though was in my capacity as a personal tutor here at my University. A few years ago I had an excellent student, well on course for a 1st class degree when, about 5 months before her finals exams, her little 12 year old brother was killed in a hit and run incident by a moron only just released from prison. She was walking him home from school at the time so had to watch him die. I had to work to keep her together in her studies and support her at such a terrible (and very highly publicised in the press) time, with - as is typical at university, no training at all to deal with such a hard situation.
Desperately sad. I was absolutely delighted when she manage to still sneak a 1st in her exams, which took place the next year due to the emotional troubles this caused.

I was a pall bearer for my grandmother and my mother.

I wet to a military funeral for a deceased friend last year. Sadly, not many people liked her. There was only one other person present. I've been to a number of memorial services, which I like better than funerals. And if at all possible, I like to visit people who don't have long to live, so they know that they are loved and appreciated. It seems heart-breaking to me that anyone should die alone and unappreciated.

I'll almost assuredly die alone, so I better get that will written having my body sent to a body farm, or maybe liquefied and used for plant food, or maybe just tossed out to sea. All I want, if anyone does bother memorializing me is a NO CLERGY! I don't want anyone blathering about fairy tales of an afterlife. I'll be just dead, and while I will not be in any shape to care, I just don't like the idea of being memorialized with B.S.




Oh, yeah... I just remembered I AM clergy!

I'm an ordained minister (Church of Subgenius).

Alright, so NO OTHER CLERGY! I'm jealous and don't want to share.

I'm with you n that. I have nothing to prove regarding the possibility of life after death. I take comfort knowing that Wittgenstein had no patience with philosophers who tried to make sense of death. Our duty is to make sense of *life* if we can. Death is not properly the province of philosophy; we have no abilities in terms of explaining it, so it's best to focus on living.

I don't mind watching depictions of heaven or hell when I'm at the movies. Those scenes are fantasies.