Wow. I am actually incredibly jealous of this woman. After years of bouncing from one junk job to another with no hope of a promotion or raise and health issues i can’t afford to take care of, something like this is exactly what I’ve suggested to a select few trusted friends.
No doom and gloom and everyone dressed in black. No tears - I’ve shed enough myself. Make it like a happy movie that has a sad ending. Throw a freaking party! Take a tour of the old stomping grounds! Watch all the movies and cartoons and shows we knew and loved. Put up a playlist on Itunes with all the old songs and leave them running. Talk about everything and anything that made a part of the great grand movie called my life - family in-jokes, the capers we had as kids, old memories of happier times.
Spend a day or three doing all that and more. And when it’s finally over, hug me goodbye and drive home from the party, knowing that I’ll be attended by a certified doctor with clean equipment at a private appointment. Forget the expensive funeral service that just makes everyone sad and poorer and don’t say how sorry you are. In fact, you should envy me because by the time you sit down to dinner I’ll be seeing my grandparents and my aunt and my kitty in a place where there’s no bills you can’t pay, no health problems you can’t get treated and no soul-crushing jobs. I’ll be in a MANSION instead of a tiny apartment, and I’ll never again shiver in the winter or wilt in the summer.
Instead I get the same old tired f*cking useless platitudes I’ve heard for years and don’t help solve anything. And to ‘make my own exit’ requires a huge amount of courage (’cause let’s face it - death is damn scary), a crapton of pain and will likely fail horribly.
The only thing worse than having to play a rigged game is being forced to play it. To sit at the table watching everyone else win big while what little you have just goes to the entry fee. And this is being done by well-meaning people who think that doing so puts them on some kind of moral pedestal. Which brings to mind a quote from a famous man who said that the worst kind of tyranny was when people participated in it and thought it was for their own good.
I completely understand