Funeral Aspirations

“I’m sad.”

“Why are you sad?”

“I’m just thinking about my eulogy, you know? Like, someday I’ll be dead, gone into the nothingness that awaits all men, the product of my time on this Earth left for those still breathing to enjoy...and, when I die, I’m probably going to have a funeral or something...and, I don’t know - I want my eulogy to be good, to have gravitas. But I just know my parents are gonna get some slackjaw commercial columnist to wipe his greasy hands all over my legacy.”

“I think you’re taking it a bit too personally. Besides, won’t you be dead?”

“Yeah, your point?”

“Hm, fair play.”

“God, I can just imagine it: “He was a good man, loved by all”, or something generic like that. He’ll skip everything that made me me. How about: “He despised the vapid and vacuous nature of commercial fiction, and spent a decade carving his name into experimental literature - he also successfully lived as a vegan and died with a whiskey in his hand and Proust, untranslated, on his lap.”

“You can’t read French?”

“Hey, I’m semi-fluent, you crétin. And by the time I die at the age of 92, after successfully beating stage two lung cancer and recording my struggle in a semi-fictional autobiography, I’ll be fluent in French. At the least.”

“What? Why would you have lung cancer?”

“Because, I’m going to suffer for my freedom of creative expression; the social and institutional stigma on cigarettes and marijuana exist only to oppress and control the thoughts of the greater populace. I wouldn’t let their corporate dogma restrict my work.”

“I’m fairly certain people are against those things because they’re bad for you.”

“Its sad how little people like you value their right of freedom; but, I guess not everyone can raise to the surface of this river we call life and see the pollution being dumped on our shores. I am a fish who has learnt to fly.”

“...yeah, you’re right. Your eulogy is going to be shit.”