I’ve thought about preaching my own funeral. Really. I’m serious. Oh, I would pawn the obituary on a previously selected person, preferably someone who knew me, as opposed to startling some hapless soul who happens to arrive early at the funeral, “Hey, would you mind reading this?” But the sermon, prerecorded of course, I prefer to reserve for myself, rather than depending on some distracted preacher in a hurry to get the thing done and not miss tee time, or fishing, a ball game, or a soap opera.
When I shared this with my wife, her response, after making sure I hadn’t received a bad report from my physician, was, “That’s just plain weird, especially the part about a prerecorded funeral sermon.”
“But they play prerecord music at funerals all the time,” I protested.
“Not music of the deceased!”
I suppose she has a point. Unlike music, a funeral sermon is not something we necessarily enjoy hearing. “Don’t you think today is a good day for a funeral sermon, dear?”
“No.”
I had dismissed the idea of showing up for my own funeral until last week when I saw the movie, “Get Low,” starring Robert Duvall, with Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek. Duvall plays the character, Felix Bush, a self-imposed hermit who has lived alone in the woods for 40 years. The movie gets it title from the first conversation Duvall has with the financially troubled funeral director, played by grim Bill Murray, who is thrilled at the monetary prospects of a funeral. “It’s about time for me to get low,” Duvall says as he states his intentions to plan his own funeral.
The laconic Duvall has determined to show up for his own mock funeral where people will tell stories about what a strange and mysterious person he is. The film is based loosely on the story of a man in Tennessee named Felix “Bush” Breaseale, who threw his own funeral party back in the 1930s. Over 12,000 people showed up, creating something of a national sensation: the event was covered by the AP and Life magazine.
In “Get Low,” Bush has a secret that he needs and wants to tell, but isn’t sure he can. It’s the reason he has imprisoned himself in his woods. “Getting low,” takes on a deeper meaning than simply preplanning a funeral. It connotes the humility that comes with sharing something painful about our past, something that has shamed us, burdened us, driven us into a hermitage of our own choosing— an isolation than allows us to live in denial of who we are meant to be, disconnected from those who could benefit from our mistakes. In that secret hiding place deep within our soul, we bury the thing that needs telling, supposing it will go to the grave with us, even as we intuitively sense that as we live, that thing of our past creates a false self, not the one we were meant to be.
Forgiving others is not always easy, and forgiving ourselves can be even harder still. Voices of the past lock us in a prison of our own making, haunting us with the verdict: “Unforgiven.”
And I thought a funeral party would be more fun than the sermon. But as Felix Bush experienced, “getting low,” is not that easy; like Bush, we have something that needs to be told, but we aren’t sure we can say it; it’s like having a dream where we’re urgently trying to shout for help but can’t utter a word. Fearful that we might die choking on the words, we silence what we need to share.
I think I’ll let the only One who can truly say it, do it for me: “Thy sins are forgiven. Thy faith has made thee whole.”
That’s a good thing to hear if you plan on showing up at your own funeral; that’s a good thing to receive before you get there, before it’s too late to “get low.”
“Life Matters,” is written by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. His email is drdavid@davidwhitlock.org. Dr. Whitlock’s website is www.davidwhitlock.org.