Your Wellness

Some people dream of their wedding. For me it’s my funeral. And I’ll be putting the ‘fun’ into it

Steeped in inside jokes and silly gags, it’s an occasion I hope my friends and family will get a bit of a laugh out of after my untimely demise

Jenny at the National Leprechaun Museum in Dublin.

Jenny Curran
Tue Feb 14 2023 - 05:31

Many people dream of the day they’ll walk down the aisle, of the song that will be playing as they put one foot in front of the other, and of the loving eyes of the person awaiting their arrival at the other end. Of course, for most people this means their wedding day, but for me it’s a little different.

With apparently only 15 years left on the clock (or five if the African witch doctor is to be believed), the event I daydream about is my funeral – or FUN-eral, as I call it. I live with many chronic illnesses. A wedding may not happen, but my FUNeral definitely will, so why not have a bit of craic planning it?

I have the details down to a fine art. Steeped in inside jokes and silly gags, it’s an occasion I hope my friends and family will get a bit of a laugh out of after my untimely demise.

First of all, I have a big fear of dead people. (I know: hilarious.) I don’t want a creepy coffin anywhere near my big day, so I’ve opted to be turned into a lemon tree, mainly because I like the irony of having more oxygen in death than I did in life. (I have type 1 brittle asthma.)

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The lemon tree is a recent decision. It came to it because:

  • I like to be useful;
  • I can act as a garnish in the custom cocktails (more on this later);
  • I can inject more sweet (or sour?) irony by engraving “When life gives you lemons...” on the terracotta pot (Geddit? Cos I’ll be dead ... I crack myself up.)

As I am being walked down the aisle in my handmade pottery plant pot, Taylor Swift’s song Long Live will be blaring from the speakers: “Long live the walls we crashed through / How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you, / I was screaming, “Long live all the magic we made”/ And bring on all the pretenders/ One day we will be remembered.”

Perfect, right? As TayTay’s dulcet tones are filling the room there’ll be a slide show of all my “best bits”, X Factor-style, similar to the scene in Love Actually where the wife of Liam Neeson’s character dies and all her photos appear in an emotional explosion.

In Ireland the person is barely cold by the time their funeral comes around. Maybe the answer is to leave a little bit more time for people to process their grief, so they can then say goodbye in a more joyous, celebratory way

Instead of me having to play a dangerous game of favouritism and divvy out my possessions to select friends and family, I’m letting fate, and their commitment to my friendship, do the hard work. There will be a table quiz about me, and whoever wins will get some of my possessions. Up for grabs is anything from my portable projector or laptop all the way to my teddy bear. Most likely no cash, though, as I plan to spend any money I have while these ‘aul wheeze bags are still trickling through.

“What’s a table quiz without a few drinks?” I hear you say. Well, no fear: there will be a me-themed cocktail menu to satisfy these needs, giving guests the option of drinking their feelings. So far I have a Jen and tonic, a Jen fizz, a double navel (instead of fuzzy navel), a sea wheeze (nodding to both my love of wild swimming and the most likely reason for my premature death) and, finally, a whiskey sour, made with the lemons from my tree. Deeeeeelicious.

[ Free drinks, my two belly buttons and one Graham Norton Big Red Chair ]

Depending on the time of year, I have visions of my friends gathering around a campfire to share stories, the flames lighting the nostalgia in their eyes as they regale each other with ridiculous tales that we have shared. Ailbhe, my bus buddy in Africa, will remember her reaction the first time I told her about being misdiagnosed with Down syndrome at the age of 24. Katie, my best friend from childhood, can share the embarrassing moment when I blew on a slushy at the bowling alley as I mistook the vapour from the ice for steam. Garry will make everyone wince as he recalls the time we went skinny dipping in the second-most-shark-infested beach in Australia at 3am while on a camping trip for our friend Jerry’s birthday. Emily will giggle through her tears as she decides which yarn to share next – will it be our first meeting at a Harry Potter pub crawl in Melbourne?

Funerals should be a celebration of life. In Ireland the person is barely cold by the time their funeral comes around. Maybe the answer is to leave a little bit more time for people to process their grief, so they can then say goodbye in a more joyous, celebratory way. According to my good friend Baaba, who is Ghanaian, and who I met when I was travelling in eastern Africa, in her culture they take their sweet, sweet time in saying so long to their dead. When her grandad died, in March, they didn’t bury him until August – and then had a wall-to-wall session. Sounds great to me.

Dying or not, I would encourage everyone to start thinking about these things, morbid as they are. Let’s put the same amount of excitement into planning our leaving party as we do our baby showers. Oh, and please pick a flattering photo for the programme.

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