A BIZARRE REQUEST

As I walked into her hospital room, she said to me, "Sit down so that I can see you better." So I did. But before I could say much of anything or even ask how she was doing, she said, "I have a bizarre request." When I started to smile, she asked why I was laughing. "I'm just wondering what you mean by 'bizarre'," I replied. "Get a paper and a pencil and I'll tell you," she said. So I did.

"These are the songs I want played at my funeral," she said. "First, I want 'The Poor People of Paris' before the service starts. Then I want 'I Wish You Love.' That's were the kids cry. Then I want 'Amazing Grace.' Then you, meaning me, get to say a few words." She caught my smile but said nothing. "Then I want 'The Entertainer.' as they go out. Life is for the living and I don't want anyone dragging their feet at my funeral."

No one did either. When Trudie died six days later, she was ready. Her family and I spent those six days alternately remembering and forgetting the tune to "Poor People of Paris." It became a running joke, and not gallows humor either. Trudie wouldn't stand for that. At the funeral, I had to play the tune over a tape recorder. When I announced the song that I had just played, the expression on the faces of the people present said, "I knew

I heard that song somewhere." And when I told them why it was played, they also had a knowing look. Typical Trudie. The kids cried in the proper place. I said two words, give or take a few hundred. And we went to the cemetery humming Scott Joplin's music. Some tears, yes; but mostly it was good feeling and joy and happiness.

Bizarre? Depends. You can't find two of those songs in any church hymnal. It wasn't bizarre music, just not typical. It certainly was different, but "different" is not a synonym for "bizarre." What made Trudie's funeral different was not so much the music but the fact that she actually selected it. What was even more different, maybe even bizarre, meaning "remarkable," is that she was willing, even wanted, in fact, to talk about her funeral while she was alive, albeit on her death bed.

That is remarkable, and, all right, bizarre. We just don't like to talk about death, you and I; death in general and our own death in particular. That is bizarre, weird, you name it. A lot of us have a great difficulty simply writing a will so afraid are we to even broach the subject of our own mortality. And age makes no difference. Young or old, death is a subject we avoid even more than we avoid talking about religion and politics.

It does no good to ask "why?". We really can't explain why we avoid the subject of death whether we are in the prime of life or in the prime of death. Death frightens us because it is an unknown. Of course ten minutes from now is just as an unknown even though we might not admit it. Now I am not advocating that we start talking about death, although there is nothing wrong with that. Nor am I proposing that we sit down and decide what music we want played at our funeral, although that, too, would be a good idea. The fact is, I am not proposing anything. I just thought you might like to know how someone I knew approached and prepared for her own death.  There was nothing bizarre about it.