Death will certainly not be the end of all the things of personal life. So what will one leave behind?
The fewer the things one can pass along, the fewer the things the survivors will have to fight over. If any such combative people populate one’s circle, that could be a factor to consider. One can leave everything to the spouse, but that’s too much to ask of a spouse, and that shouldn’t be the job of the spouse. If the sons want cars and the daughters want furniture, the spouse in question should decide beforehand which son gets which car and which daughter gets which sofa. If there’s stuff that’ll be more trouble than it’s worth, have a garage sale or something! This will work, provided one lives with integrity and has the necessary conversations with the concerned persons to arrive at prudent, considerate, transparent decisions that will not be misunderstood in life or contested afterward.
The regular churchgoer should delight in contemplating which scriptures should be read during one’s service. One quickly turns to favorite, well-known passages. Hearing one’s favorite scriptures at Mass is a treat, and one can look forward to imagining the mourners at one’s funeral hearing God question Job, “Have you seen the janitors of Shadowland?” “No, but maybe our friend in the casket is seeing them right now!” will think one’s mourners with a shiver and a keen sense of thrill. Can one arrange for the Gospel to consist of passages from different Gospels, leaping from Matthew, to John, to Revelation? Perhaps one could explain beforehand to his priest exactly what he wants done so that, if misgivings threaten, the persuasive powers of one’s convictions can prevail. Are there favorite songs of the spouse, or another close one? That could be the best way of honoring that special someone.
The funeral Mass might be too late to attempt to desperately redefine one’s life and one’s relationship with God. It’s simply a routine religious service performed as a powerful act of closure upon a life, but it is not the only or even final such act of closure. The reception after a funeral is an excellent opportunity to present one’s vision of life. A slide show can display photos and texts, any visual aids. A Catholic funeral would not be the place for a reading from the Upanishads, or a short story by Kafka, but a reception slide show could include dozens of literary excerpts one lived by in life. If music is played, and if music was central to that life, one might not need look any further than one’s own smartphone to create a playlist he’d choose to have played at his reception. Those will be suffering songs, angry songs, desperate songs, cacaphonous songs, love songs, revolution songs, old songs, new songs, forgotten songs, instrumental songs, sublime, exquisite, magnificent songs people will be glad to hear, knowing the person had the decency not to try to represent himself at his reception as someone he was not. That playlist should be such an emotional joy and reward that one listens to it every year on one’s birthday, keeping it current, adding and subtracting, keeping it perfect. A good death is a good work in life, an opportunity one can constructively embrace.