Give Me My Wings
"From my rotting body, flowers will grow. And I am in them. And that is eternity."
--Edvard Munch
"Give me my wings." --Tool
When I die, long down the road from here, I want to be cremated. I want to be burned. No sterile years for me in the ground; no embalming so even the worms will not touch me. No. I want to trade my oxygen for carbon, bleeding into the air in a final release, a final bequeathing of my raw materials.
Spare me the gray dust of former being; spare me the tears and mourning. Remember me, and remember what I show you now. Better that my memories go on after me, than my memory itself. Go to the breakwall at sunset, and scatter me to the winds. Let me drift upon the harbor. Let me mix with the sand and clay and wind and black earth. Let me be free.
And when you do this, remember: Every Lake Huron twilight, every summer storm, every Port Austin breeze tinged with lilac belongs to me now, and I to it, forever.
--Edvard Munch
"Give me my wings." --Tool
When I die, long down the road from here, I want to be cremated. I want to be burned. No sterile years for me in the ground; no embalming so even the worms will not touch me. No. I want to trade my oxygen for carbon, bleeding into the air in a final release, a final bequeathing of my raw materials.
Spare me the gray dust of former being; spare me the tears and mourning. Remember me, and remember what I show you now. Better that my memories go on after me, than my memory itself. Go to the breakwall at sunset, and scatter me to the winds. Let me drift upon the harbor. Let me mix with the sand and clay and wind and black earth. Let me be free.
And when you do this, remember: Every Lake Huron twilight, every summer storm, every Port Austin breeze tinged with lilac belongs to me now, and I to it, forever.
posted by Milo at 9:23 AM
6 Comments:
chris (my husband ) and i were talking about this about a month ago. i told him that when i die, i don't want a funeral, or a memorial. i want everyone to have a party that starts at 10pm. and i want them to have a blast and sing and dance. i'm a night owl, thus the lateness of it all. and i also told him that, just to be even more riduculous, i wanted everyone to bring a paint brush and paint something - since i'm notorious for starting painting projects at 10pm. (not so much anymore) and then i want everyone to take a little bit of me and throw me where and when they get the feeling it's right and time. off the top of a mountain or down the toilet. doesn't matter to me as long as it has meaning to them. and if they think of me everytime they take a dump, i'll be remembered a lot!
Very poetic. Very nice. This is how I wanna be disposed of...sprinkled on a certain lake in North Idaho that I've grown up on.
I want, after all useful organs are harvested, to be cremated and scattered from the top of Mt. Evans, back in Colorado. Let the winds carry me where they will.
(Although, cynically, I realize that once I'm dead I won't give a good goddamn what happens, and that all mourning and stuff will be for the benefit of survivors, and I really *don't* get to comment on the matter. So I don't fret it much now, either.)
Well said.
I grew up in the Tri Cities. My first field trip was to a sugar beet farm somewhere in the Thumb. Now I live in a rural area west of Ann Arbor. The lilacs are blooming, and soon it will be warm enough to watch the bats swoop over the roof in the summer dusk.
It sounds like you're in Darmstadt. Nearly a lifetime ago, I attended the base school at Karlsruhe, and I remember Sunday drives through the Black Forest, roast chicken dinners with pommes frites in a little village called Hugelsheim.
You've left some thoughtful entries here. I hope you keep writing. Good luck.
While I like the idea of having the remains of my physical body scattered to the wind (I particularly like the idea of being scattered at several places around the globe which hold special meaning), I can't quite get over the thought of being burned - I have a dreadful phobia of fire. But then I really don't like the idea of being buried either, all that earth over me. Still, as it is only my phsyical body and my spirit has soared to a higher plain, I tell myself it's pretty much wasted energy to be worrying about it now!
beautifully written.
I was inclined toward cremation until i saw the last season of Six Feet Under; a "green funeral" sounds like the proper way to go, I think. better environmentally, simpler, less reminiscent of the camps.
i think we have extraordinarily fucked-up attitudes toward death and dying in this country, even more than toward sex. i'd like to be able to really come to terms with death before i die, and to have a meaningful life as well as death. i think that's as much as anyone can ask for. yet in the current state even that's a lot.
Post a Comment
<< Home