Making funeral plans

Last Friday, a woman from the local funeral home came over, at Jan’s invitation, to help me plan my funeral. She arrived at 10 am and left shortly after 1 pm. I have decided upon cremation of my remains, referred to in the business as cremains. At this time I do not plan to have a funeral service, although that may change at a later date.

Jan told the lady about my being hospitalized in January 2007 with a brain tumor. It turns out the lady from the funeral home had herself a very serious medical problem (MRSA) last year. The brain tumor I had did not disqualify me from the cremation plans offered by the funeral home. They have four questions you have to answer, one of which concerns AIDS. I don’t recall the other three. In any case, I passed the health questions with flying colors, you could say. I signed up for the five-year plan, which will cost about $2800. If I were to pay it all right now, it would cost $2200. That is what I would prefer, but if I were to die before the five years are up, the funeral home would pay the reminder of what I owe. I have thirty days to make any changes to the plan.

I remember watching a Penn & Teller program about funerals; I think it was called Death. According the Penn & Teller, a body in a casket eventually liquefies. In other words, it turns to, for lack of a better word, ooze or goo. I find that really gross. Once you are placed in the crematorium, your flesh is burned away immediately. The reason you stay in the crematory for a few hours is to disintegrate the bones.

Once the lady from the funeral home left, Jan and I went to Kim’s house to get the books from the HAT/TAM library. There were four boxes of books. We loaded up the books and came home. Now I’ve got to figure out what to do with the books. I will probably go through them and weed some of them out. Perhaps I can find someone willing to store them at their house. I already have more books than I have shelf space for. Some shelves are now double stacked.

That afternoon, we walked two miles at TCC West. I used my MP3 player for the first time. It works really well.

The next morning we drove out to Keystone State Park and did the 5 K volkswalk. I was a warm day (warm for January, that is). The walk was my 221st volkswalk. I also picked up the receipts for this year. On the first of the month a group of walkers from the Tulsa Walking Club went out there and walked.

I came home and took a nap and then got ready for Movie Night at the Bradleys. The movie we watched was Transsiberian. It was a mystery kind of movie. Gail had another commitment, so there was no piano duet playing that night. Barbara later said she had nightmares all night. She was still talking about the movie this morning when I picked her up to go to church.

Since the Music CareRing is no longer meeting prior to the Sunday service, I do not have to leave the house as soon as I did before the collapse of the CareRing (the term is supposed to be a play on the word “caring,” I am guessing). Today I gave a ride to Barbara who phoned me before I left. Today’s service was lay led. The air was much colder this morning than yesterday. The speaker talked about the small island of Goree off the coast of Senegal in Africa.