Flowers to infinity for Aunt Eunie

Well Im off at the gaddafull hour of 6:15 AM for a road trip to Buffalo. My best and favourite and only remaining Aunt has died and we have to be there for a 2:00PM service.
Now before we do the whole polite society thing of “I’m sorry for your loss” and all that, let me say that she is mostly glad, I am mostly glad and the rest of the family are mostly glad. She has been suffering miserably for years. Had we lived in a different age she probably wouldn’t have been forced to pay rent on the old worn out apartment her body had become, where the plumbing and wiring no longer worked adequately at all.
I am not a complete fan of modern medicine, keeping suffering people suffering for years till death, keeping horribly deformed babies alive when they should be allowed to pass off and try again, etc. etc. No sir, I don’t like it.
However I also know that some friends and relations would not be here living good lives without it. So it’s a bit of a trade off.
I am a supporter and advocate of the Hemlock Society, Marian’s Friends and Planned Parenthood and all that that implies.
And just to make it more interesting, I don’t believe in suicide as an available choice personally. But I darn well believe it is an inalienable right for those who choose it. I don’t believe in war, (well, clearly it exists, I mean I don’t agree in engaging in it). I’m adamantly against capitol punishment. I try to avoid violence and killing.
However if someone wants to do violence to themselves, as long as it is only to themselves and it doesn’t leave a hideous mess for someone else to deal with, it’s their own trip.
That hideous mess issue is a really big issue though. Hideous messes can happen in people’s heads too. That is a really good reason not to kill oneself, the likelihood of it leaving a huge smear of trauma over a lot of people is really good.
I keep a list, People Who’ve Died (ala Jim Carroll). I keep track of how they died. Natural, murder, suicide and slow suicide, I think are my categories. There may be one other, I don’t wanna look right now. The suicides and slow suicides do tend to make me mad though. Yes, it is their right, but I tend to get angry anyway. Most of them left really huge messes literally and figuratively.
That’s a bad choice in my view. But it just keeps happening anyway.
I hope when I die to leave not much icky but lot’s of little bequests that make people happy I loved them and happy I died and thought of them. I want to be burned to a crisp and I want a speaker for the dead. I hate those funerals where they ignore the reality of the person, the good, the bad and the completely silly. Instead choosing just platitudes.
Recently I went to a church funeral for an old, old friend. Being at a church funeral I expected the worse. I was so relieved when the minister just jumped right in and in a very kind and loving way, acknowledged the suicide and that our friend was a dual-diagnosed schizophrenic, drug addict who was also a wonderful, kind and sweet being. Everyone felt able to speak their real feelings then. The result was one of the most cathartic and beautiful funerals I’ve ever been to.
And to think that sweet Brucifer who lived mostly on the street, who owned virtually nothing and had no money, had such a beatific and restorative send off is so very heartening. That thing about the meek, maybe it does come true.