Funeral

I drove down to West Hartford today for the memorial service for Sally Ayer Rossetti, my mother's favorite cousin. The readings and music were standard - Dvorak, "How Great Thou Art*," "Amazing Grace," "His Eye is on the Sparrow;" The 23rd Psalm, The Lord's Prayer, 2 Timothy 4:7-8, and John 14:1-7. It turns out that the whole service was based on the bulletin to another service Sally had gone to years ago.  She brought the bulletin to her daughter and said "This is perfect.  Do this."

The medley of instrumental ABBA songs for the prelude was a little different, though.

My brother was there, and Sally's children, who I had not seen in decades, though we have corresponded a bit. Only one other relative, one of her brother's grandsons. It felt odd.  Yogi Berra supposedly said "If you don't go to other people's funerals they won't come to yours," one of those impossibilities that is nonetheless true. The number of people likely to attend your funeral slowly trickles away.  If you are still in the workforce there will be people for whom you are currently a big deal in their lives.  Ten years later, not so much. This is also true for how active you are at church or in other groups. You start to become invisible when you are gone. 

I keep telling people some things they can do as they age to fight invisibility, because regardless of whether you care about the attendance at your funeral, you might need someone to drive you to a consult you have to be drugged for more than an hour away, to wait in the lobby for you to be able to return home, or need meals when you have a hip replacement. 

I am already destined to be set on an ice floe and pushed out to sea, but what about the last few years before that?