"Chapter Four"

A Grave Issue Or Not?

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Aren't we peculiar, not only as individuals but as a society...while we espouse our 'freedoms' and 'free will' to do what we choose, in conversation we often hit a verboten wall....

Sex.

Religion.

Politics.

Not many can truthfully say they speak their mind on these topics to anyone other than a very, very short "A" list.  Okay, possibly some will more easily speak about politics, and to a lesser extent religion...heaven forbid anyone talks about sex and preferences and such details, making listeners immediately cover their ears and shout, "T.M.I.!  TOO MUCH INFORMATION!"

Relax, I'm not going there.  Not to any of those topics.  However, I do want to talk about another topic that makes many a two-legged uncomfortable: Death.  In my meandering way I want to back up the bus to my high school days.

My family was moving into a NC county with only one high school, a county which was at the bottom of the then-newly instituted literacy tests in verbal and math categories.  Little did I know that within only months I'd be attending a boarding school in north-central Virginia, Woodberry Forest School.

Situated (then) on 1,400 acres of pastoral farmland with Jeffersonian architecture abounding,  Woodberry was to be one of my positive pivotal points in Life's Journey.  For the purposes of this chapter, I want to discuss my English teachers there, for they instilled in me an appreciation for vocabulary and all things literary.  

If I might add one disclaimer here it's that I never 'got' poetry.  Nothing to do with the teachers involved, poetry never has and never will 'trip my trigger'...except for my favorite of poems:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue;

Some poems rhyme,

But this one doesn't.

Apologies to Frost and Keats and myriad others.  That's just one of my quirks.  As a college professor once said, "We're all weird, we're just weird in different ways."  Poetry and I don't share many chromosomes.

My first year at WFS I had John Reimers for English.  Most classes had a very low student-teacher ratio, and this one was no exception.  Maybe 10 of us sat in an arc around the basement room walls in that Anderson Hall classroom. As class began, some sense of classical music would be playing on a big, green, relic cassette player, with our teacher quietly reading through some journal, paper, or other. When he was ready he would speak and begin creating folds in our cerebral cortexes.  

Some saw him as quirky, but I identified oh so well with quirky that I ate that year up like peanut butter on Ritz crackers.  Hard work and high expectations from the top, mind you, but satisfying in the end.  He was demanding, and for a reason.  It paid off in spades for me.

It was during my senior year in AP English that an assignment served as the basis for this particular chapter.  Young Ben Cameron was our mustached teacher, with a strong  theater background as well...makes for a more interesting classroom experience when you have a demonstrative leader.  Mr. Cameron in action led you to one thought: "You don't need any more coffee, sir."

If you haven't done so already, you must get comfortable with my digressions, as they are as plentiful as rabbits in a spring meadow.  That was my AP English class, at the end of which my exam score placed me out of all English requirements in college.  Not a one did I take, there.  Math?  I was inept in algebra and calculus at Woodberry, and suffered even more at college, never surmounting what to this day is one of my learning obstacles.  Alas, my SAT scores were just the opposite: my Math was always above 700, and my Verbal never reached 500.  I kid you not.  Go figure.

And now to the flash point of this post.  I'm not sure a teacher in public school could get away with this, as stupidly litigious as we've become in our society...but Mr. Cameron gave us a most interesting assignment one day.  We were to write a paper about committing suicide, where we would do it, how we would do it, and what music would be playing.

How did it make you feel to just read that?  Could you sit privately and write such a paper?  I didn't balk, nor did anyone else, that I remember.  The purpose wasn't to make us think about death, per se; rather, it was to give us a jarring topic that forced us to coordinate the brain with the pen-in-hand and deal with something that admittedly caught us off-guard.  Much like the AP exam, itself, I might add.

What I wrote about is not the subject of this chapter.  To satisfy your curiousity (c'mon, admit it!), I wanted to hike up to the edge of Shortoff Mountain on the southeastern rim of Linville Gorge Wilderness Area (NC), and jump of that massive, sheer stone face, with Mozart's "Requiem Mass in D Minor" playing.  Spreading my arms wide like a hawk and but for a moment feeling the freedom of flight.  End of surreal assignment.

In my growth through the decades, I've gotten comfortable with the idea of death.  In fact, I don't like to use words like 'death' and 'dying' because I know nothing ever, ever ends.  "Life" simply transitions to other planes of existence.  I prefer to use the phrase 'crossing over' which is far more accurate of a description.  Oh, many earthly brains wish to see this Life as some sort of end-all, but that is a most blatant illusion in every respect.   It simply isn't so.

Take the flutes I make, for example.  The tree is dead.  Dead by society's terms, that is.  Even dead trees are matter, right?  And they're made of of compounds, made up of molecules, made up of atoms, right?  And atoms are made of protons and neutrons, around which spin electrons held into orbit by a Divine Power, right?  Just because the tree is dead doesn't mean things change at the atomic level...they keep on keepin' on. Cells just don't replicate.  It's just a different 'relativity', for lack of a better expression.  Any woodworker will tell you wood is VERY much 'alive', and I especially sense it in my flutes.  They 'talk' to me, in no uncertain terms.

We're all raised with certain ideologies and beliefs, the majority of which we accept without question and assume we ourselves made the choice as opposed to being handed said choice. I don't need a single soul to view things as I do.  All I can tell you is I'm at peace with the crossing over from this earthly life, and at peace with my sense of a 'bigger picture'.  Some fear it.  I embrace it.  I don't have a problem being with spirits in their last hours, either, and am honored to play my flutes or just 'be' for those that might welcome some relief.

The human mind is a querulous piece of machinery.  There is only the moment of 'now'.  The past is only a memory, and the future is only imagined.  Even so, how many do you know who live in one or the other instead of the Moment?  To truly live to our potential is to embrace what is before us....not lament what once was, nor fear what could be.

We're all going to 'die'.  How will you face it?  With dignity?  Kicking and screaming?  A big ol' smile?  Whining?  I wish for us all to do so with honor.  My thoughts for this chapter really deal with the earthly reaction once we're no longer a 'living' part.

I fully know and accept the day will come I'm no longer sucking oxygen molecules. The proverbial 'given'.  I know that I will have finished what I came here to do, to create, to touch others, to instruct, to laugh and love often.  But to put this into societal perspective is to really put my foot down about some major 'points' immediately after my death.  TOO many 'funerals' are all about the needs of the living, NOT the wishes of the deceased.  Can I get an "AMEN!" from the choir?

First, I WILL be cremated.  Graveyards, burial plots, headstones, mausoleums are a waste of time and space.  Ever notice in almost any community what prime real estate a bunch of skeletons reside on?  "Oh, I want them to see the beauty here..."  Are ya kiddin' me?  You think the 'vision' we have after life is inferior to this earthly one?  It's purely for our own edification, those left behind. Think about it.

Cremate me.  Let loved ones spread my ashes where they know I'd like my leftover molecules to hit terra firma.  I want no stone, and no marker.  I will exist only in the memories of those I touched, or through things I created and left behind.

If a ceremony/gathering must take place after my crossing, then I have some very specific guidelines I insist be followed:

1.  No black allowed.  Period.  Even gray would be frowned upon.

2.  I want people to wear the brightest colors possible.  The more outlandish the better. Sweatpants and shorts and t-shirts would favor better seating, though I understand those items are not always available in wild colors and patterns.  Deal with the discrepancy. Dress up black sweatpants with a Hawaiian shirt, for example, and I'll overlook the pants color.

3.  No slow mud-music, and God forbid NO organ music.  Only upbeat, celebratory music will be played.

4. I would hope someone could gather big trash bags of sawdust and small wood scraps from my shop and have everyone grab a handful on their way out...then spread the spoils wherever they feel so led.

5.  Flute music and barbershop quartet music would be encouraged, to be performed 'live'.  Beforehand, taped music like up-tempo Big Band songs could be played, much in the line of Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five.

6.  After any ceremony there needs to be a big party, where people are TRULY celebrating Life in general.  Dancing, laughing, partying will be strongly encouraged.  Strongly, if not mandated outright.

Life goes on. We're all a part of each other.  We should live every day as if it were every holiday wrapped up into one.  Purposefully.  Live life fully and large, and give, give, give unto others...that way, you do it unto yourself.

I shall now step down off my soapbox.  I have other chapters to write.