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Embracing Life

Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside of us. Only a few really get free: free of fear, want, worry and stress. Free to be gloriously guilt-free and living unashamed, in the manner that gives us the greatest personal satisfaction. Instead of joyfully falling in love with ourselves, others and the varieties of all things, we fall in line, assume our “responsibilities” and take on the burdens of survival and conformity.

By the time I was 30, I was actively conforming and surviving and hating every minute of it. I suffered from all of the peace-seeking illusions that most others have: if I had more money, a better relationship, better friends, if I were better looking, smarter, had more degrees, ad infinitum, then I would be happy.

Not knowing I had the cart before the horse, I searched in the same old places everyone else does to find peace and fulfillment. I did not know that I had adopted a plan to find peace and security that would never work. It was “seek but do not find.” I did not know that peace does not come by getting everything you want; that peace comes instead through acceptance. Acceptance of life on life’s terms; acceptance of your beautiful self as perfect, as good and decent; acceptance of your right to be here and to be as you are; acceptance of your right to follow your own internal guidance and know what is right for you.

When I first heard that the secret to living more fully could quite possibly come through the acceptance of the eventuality of my own death, I was skeptical. How could one do that? My attempts to “think my way through it” ended in frustration. I just could not make being dead “real” to my conscious mind. It seemed so upside down and backwards. I did not know it at the time, but I had spent most of my life doing everything I could to deny death’s reality for me. I was willing to do almost anything to even avoid thinking about my own death.

I had helped my parents pre-arrange their funerals and watched them find greater joy in each other and their retirement. They seemed to be happier, more fulfilled. Shortly after, I reluctantly attended a “Confrontation of Death” workshop at the University of Oregon in which we participated in a series of exercises designed to make us confront our feelings about mortality, including planning our own funeral. It was a painful and frightening experience for me, but it opened my eyes to a possibility I had never imagined. Afterward, I felt great joy about nothing in particular and everything in general. My life began to change, seemingly without effort on my part. My priorities simply shifted. I saw beauty where I had not seen it, found joy where I had not found it. I discovered that “being” is far more secure and satisfying than “doing.”
Living with the shadow of your own death automatically reprioritizes life and enhances the potential to buy more “present moment.” When you think about it, all unhappiness comes from an attempt to live in some other moment than now. Yet, most of us have difficulty living in the moment because our fear keeps us attempting to plan our future to be “safe.” We cannot be preoccupied with the future and enjoy the present moment at the same time.

Most of us spend an lifetime preoccupied with and planning for the future. When the “future” arrives, however, we cannot really enjoy it because we are preoccupied with the “next” future. What would your life be like if you were free of worry, strain and effort?

Most of us can hardly imagine the answers to those questions. Strange, is it not? All the things we worry about and all the things we want to happen drift into insignificance when we confront our own mortality. If you learned you had a week to live, would you spend it worrying about he crab grass, the boss’ opinion and a thousand other things our minds frantically touch on in a day?

Create Your Funeral
In the past 30 years, through our Life Appreciation Training Seminars for funeral home staff, modelled in part on the University of Oregon’s “Confrontation of Death” workshop, I have seen thousands of funeral home staff members change. They find the freedom to live without the fear and the burden of living as others say they should through the simple process of confronting their own death by planning for it.

The personalized funeral plan outlined at the conclusion of this article will lead you through a unique discovery process. Find a quiet place where you will remain undisturbed for about an hour, and think about how life will continue after you are gone. Think about when and how you might choose to lay your body down. In your mind, move forward in time to that event and know that while nothing is accomplished in death (it is all accomplished in living), it remains that bodies die, including yours. For the purpose of the exercise, tell yourself you have one week to live. Close your eyes and see yourself telling your most beloved that in a week, you will be gone. Give yourself permission to laugh, to cry and to remember. There is an implicit psychological progression to the plan. If you follow it from beginning to end, you will discover what is right for you.

Creating a ceremony that reflects you - your ideas, beliefs and feelings - will become increasingly clear. As you begin to find your way through the exercise of confronting your own mortality by planning your personalized funeral, be bold. Displaying symbols of your life at the funeral might help your family remember what you liked and what you did, so get creative.

Props alone will not give them a sense of what they loved about you, however. Having your golf clubs displayed at the head of your casket will certainly spark thoughts about your enjoyment of golf to your family and friends, but that alone can never crystallize the childlike energy and beautiful sense of awe you experienced when you hit that solid sweet spot and saw the ball sail down the fairway. Arrange your funeral, therefore, to bring your family and friends that experience. Have golf balls given to the funeral attendees with the request they take it to a tee and hit in your memory. Or have the funeral at the golf course and make hitting the ball part of the ceremony.

As you plan, try to give others a sense of your experiences in life. If your grandchildren were the center of your life, organize the ceremony around their play activities wherever you have it, such as in a daycare center or at a playground. You can arrange to have the funeral any place you loved: a park, lake, the woods, a restaurant, an athletic field, on a boat, in a bar, at the beach, your home, or whatever location will have meaning for your family in remembering you as they knew you in life, not death.

If spiritual matters are important to you, your church or a geographical location that has inspired and empowered you might be the most appropriate funeral location. As you know, funeral homes are designed to accommodate the requirements of funerals, and that might be the most appropriate location for you - especially if it is a family business of a funeral firm where you conducted your life’s work. On the other hand maybe you want to create a celebration with champagne, a brass band, party favors and your favorite food spread out on fine linen tablecloths? Maybe a more formal ceremony is appropriate, with more pomp and circumstance? Perhaps a head table, where close friends are seated who will deliver formal eulogies, might be more in keeping with your life and wishes?

When my dear father-in-law died, 300 stand-up comedians and friends came to say goodbye to one of their own. Many of them took a turn at the microphone, doing bits of their acts, while some blatantly stole parts of his act. As we laughed and cried our way through our goodbyes, we all knew he would not have wanted it any other way. We felt his beautiful presence and energy that day. Some have said that the day was so powerful for them that they still carry a sense of him with them. I know I do. By the way, choose the music you want played. Make your funeral an interactive one. Once you start the process, the form at the end of this article will lead you. Remember that two-way communication is far more satisfying than the old “sit and be preached to” method. Meaningful, interactive funeral experiences require many different verbal and nonverbal kinds of participation by family and friends, as reasonably required, to crate powerful and living memories. Planned and effectively orchestrated human participation begins to create a more powerful connective energy in the funeral experience than just the nonverbal props alone.

Ministers and spiritual leaders skilled at talking to the bereave can bring a dimension of comfort and hope, but they need not be the only participants. Consider making a video of yourself talking to your friends and family, or showing a video of a special family function. You can leave messages on audiotapes for friends and family to hear at the funeral. Even bequeathing special personal items can serve as a moving part of the ceremony. If you have a beloved pet, make provisions for him/her to play a part, if you choose.

Experience From Expression
Real personalized funerals not only “look” different from traditional funerals, they also “feel” different. The difference is in the emotional context of the experience, which imparts to survivors a strong and lasting sense of who you were to them. It is an experience that delivers a powerful personal insight and an emotional connection with a living and sustainable memory of you. This is no small gift you give; when accomplished, its effect is felt forever.

A “good funeral” is any funeral that crates effective grieving opportunities. Good funerals create safe boundaries for grieving and make the public expression of loss acceptable. When we grieve for any particular loss, we always access our personal “loss history” and create the potential for us to grieve for all of the losses for which we needed to grieve but did not.

Thinking through your own funeral in terms of how it might express you - including the development of a permanent memorial or a “virtual” memorial on an Internet Website - enlarges the realm of possibilities that anyone would be able to discover for the development of meaningful funerals for others. In fact, we have discovered that the entire process of discovering how to meaningfully express your life is vastly more educational toward learning how to help others express theirs than almost any other activity.

The reason most funeral directors do not actually engage in this productive exercise is not that they do not have the time. (Do not tell yourself that because each of us does in life exactly what we want to do. Whether we will admit that or not is another matter.) It is actually because most of us fear that we do not know ourselves well enough or that we are not substantial enough human beings to create an experience of substance and value. Neither is true. As you honestly begin to respond to the questions on the form at the end of this article, you might be surprised at what comes out. You might uncover a beauty or a spark of inspiration that impacts you personally and, in turn, becomes forever helpful to your clients.

If you think you are ready to face what could prove an awesome emotional task, albeit a rewarding and educational one, develop your own personalized funeral. Make it an expression of you - who you are, how you feel, what you believe and what you want to say.