If I get bitten, you’d better brain me quick, k?

I started listening to podcasts and doing the spotify thing for music since the pandemic started. I feel like a dinosaur, just shy of my 40th birthday. lol

Anyway, currently listening to Alex Wagner’s Six Feet Apart podcast about rituals where they are discussing death and funerals during this time. Not sure that I signed up for this topic but I miss The Circus which is on hiatus. Anyway, it made me want to open up OD and write out what I want for myself whenever I do pass. Hubby and family know what I want already, basically. I should probably refresh them, though.

First of all – if any of my organs can be donated – DONATE THEM IMMEDIATELY. Autopsy requested – even if circumstances don’t require it. It’s a good thing to know for hereditary health. No embalming – YUCK. Cheapest box you can get cuz apparently you need one to be cremated. Then cremate me NAKED, no jewellery. Disperse my specific belongings as directed and DONATE the rest. I don’t want a funeral. I don’t want a wake. There should be an obituary published in the local paper detailing biological family history and especially calling out Family-By-Choice. For those I leave behind, I’d like someone to arrange an informal get-together at least 6 months later where people share photos and memories while playing beautiful music – I suggest upbeat, positive tunes! – and eating lots of CHEESE (my fave food). No flowers, especially NOT carnations — except, if someone else feels strongly, maybe ONE bright, COLOURFUL, happy, LIVELY, feel-good arrangement to be donated to a senior’s home afterward. Donations to mental or heart health.

I would like everyone attending and anyone who wants to do so to write what they really thought of me and/or a special memory on a note WITH their full name and put it in an envelope that they seal and date. All envelopes will be sealed in another, bigger envelope with a copy of my obituary, a couple of photos, potentially a copy of my family tree and only opened in 50 years – so given to a lawyer’s care and/or to Library Archives Canada. Like a genealogy time-capsule – so my descendants will know what people really thought of me!

What to do with my remains… I’m indifferent. Kinda. I don’t believe it really matters but I also definitely DO NOT want to be in an urn on anyone’s shelf. That gives me the heebie-jeebies. Scatter me somewhere gorgeous and private. Don’t get a permit. Do it on the down-low. I like both the mountains and the ocean – just don’t want to be IN the ocean forever, ideally. I got really, really sick on a whale watching tour once. lol I don’t really care to be interred anywhere but if that’s the only option, whatevs. I do NOT expect or want anyone to come visit me. I won’t be there. I do like the idea of a permanent marker that future generations can find – headstone is a bit much and too expensive but perhaps a plaque somewhere or a bench in my name… Something fairly permanent or at least with a good paper trail (it’s the researcher in me), inexpensive and meaningful.

End of life care… Whether sooner or later from now, if I do not have a VERY GOOD chance of recovering at least 75-85% or more (increasing % with advancing age) of the life I had before, no extraordinary measures. Do not leave me on a ventilator if the odds are better that I will never wake up or I will not recuperate to have a fairly normal life. I don’t want to be burden on anyone, financially or emotionally or physically. Ever. And I don’t want to take that staff or those supplies away from someone who could make better use of the resources.

I don’t really know how I will feel in the moment about dying alone like people during this pandemic are forced to – but I do know that I will want everyone to do what is safest for THEM if their is risk to others and, if you give me enough lorazepam, I probably won’t care that much one way or the other. lol Or I won’t be aware enough for it to matter. That would be humane enough for all involved, IMO. If I’m just confused about things, don’t stress about calming me. If I do end up in a home not remembering my family but otherwise healthy – if I call you, looking for you THEN come. If I’m with it enough to ask for you, you’d better make it happen. If not, don’t worry about it. It would probably just make me feel bad or funny knowing I’m supposed to remember something I don’t anyway. I will always remember my Nanny saying as my mom was driving her back to her nursing home that mom was “really nice” and that Nanny knew she was supposed to remember who she was but didn’t — very matter-of-fact. Really, the only thing I dread is having a panic attack when I don’t know what is going on. I had a BAD one when I came out of a surgery a few years ago and I -NEVER- want to deal with anything like that again. Normally, I can tell one might come or figure out it’s happening pretty quickly, thanks to 25+ years experience, but waking up IN one? Nooooo thank you. You really do think the world is ending or you’re going bananas when you wake up in one. Just do your best to help prevent that and I will be just fine, thanks.

I believe as soon as I’m dead, I will know everything I ever needed or wanted to know in this life so if I’m murdered, by all means, do your best to get the mutherfucker but if I just “didn’t live to see XYZ” and you feel bad – don’t. I will know. I will see. The good news is the list of possible killers is short at the moment – at least, I think it is! lol Only my BIL and one of my cousins and their spouse (though I seriously doubt the latter would make the effort) make the I’m Just Barely Serious List.

And, to close – if covid-19 morphs into a full-scale zombie virus, you best beat my head in as soon as I get bitten. Don’t waste time! Save yourselves!

EDITED TO ADD: If, for some reason, you cannot incinerate me naked FOR THE LOVE OF GOD do not put a bra on me! Loose nightie, please!