I Planned My Funeral

Death, loss, navel-gazing, and a public showing of my nudes (group navel-gazing).

I feel as though I took a deep dive into my inner world around the age of nine, where life suddenly became exciting and I started to think about the kind of person I was going to be. In my room, which felt like a yellow-blue-and-pink-gingham themed sanctum, I had an old Windows 98 computer where I would write short stories and poetry, with note paper stacked high by my Webkinz collection, full of illustrations. I got really into designing clothes from scrapbook paper and hanging them on little wire hangers. Littlest Pet Shop, Seventeen Tween magazine, chunky lipgloss that always had lint in it, and feather boas were a mainstay. A blue CD player that played Gospel for Kids and the Beach Boys exclusively around the clock, with the edition of Jump Five and Barlow Girls later to come. I would make lotus flowers to put on my bed after I made it every morning out of used dryer sheets. I had a canopy with pink butterflies and swirls all over it. It was all very cute. A fairy castle of creativity, glitter, and pre-teen bliss.

What I also had was an ongoing txt.tx file I’d update regularly called the Murder List, even though I knew only three people (divided by ranking of who was most likely to be murdered and how soon), and I was obsessed with death and writing my-last-will-and-testament. Medieval torture techniques were of interest in the history books I got from the library. I stand by my public statements that this device would be fantastic for cracking my back. When you grow up in a small town filled with old people, funerals become a social gathering. My favourite part of visitation was walking up to the casket and seeing what people looked like when they were dead. Mostly wrinkly, cold, and with gaudy make-up, but definitely dead, with a little bit of a pickly-rot smell, too. I would talk to ghosts and tree spirits that I thought would visit my room at night when I left the window open, and I kept a diary of my dreams, especially nightmares. I grew up on a farm, and death was always around me. My dad used to joke that his grandpa would macabrely mutter, “You’ve got livestock, and you’ve got deadstock.” Meaning, that death is inevitable, and expensive.

When you get older, death becomes real - it’s no longer a wrinkly person in a casket, it’s young fleshy people that you’ve eaten with, danced with, and laughed so hard that you feel sparkly, because that’s a human way to feel. It’s drugs and alcohol poisoning, it’s sorrow, it’s bedrooms that haven’t had fresh air in them with takeout piled high and clothes growing mildew. It’s a car crash. Death is roadkill, blood, guts, and fear. Death is the bodies of babies on your Instagram stories while you sit in bed and wonder why you’re so numb. Death is everywhere, and you start to think to yourself, “Why is it them? And not me?”. I lost a dear friend of mine, at the age of twenty. I still think about her every day and celebrate her in my ways, outside of the religious community that united us. Loss became real for me that day, in a way that I am only now just understanding the effects it had on me, six years later. I told myself that if she didn’t deserve to be happy and live - because she was the best of all of us - then neither did I. Death takes from you, a little bit of yourself every time you encounter it.

Death also comes in many forms, and it’s the little deaths in life that pile up until you’re standing in a park on your way to work, crying and not really knowing why you’re crying but also feeling like you were supposed to come there and cry anyway. I stopped crying a few years ago, and am only now learning how to again. My brother, Leo, who is a knight and a sage, once told me that you need at least 20 minutes to allow an emotion to pass through your body. The way that I process emotions is to vacuum or answer an email so that if at least I’m failing at my mission objective of being a human happiness robot, I’m a productive human happiness robot. I used to let my feelings consume me, then I convinced myself I didn’t have any. Now, I journal like a crazy person, take deep breaths even if people are watching me, I like Minion movies because I feel like one, and try to find people who are just as crazy as me. I do have feelings, I just need the time and space to feel and release them. I just need a little bit of emotional safety.

When I was a teenager, feeling particularly emo while I listened to Limp Bizkit through broken wired headphones (my most white-trash, guilty pleasure of all time - a true Stayner, Ontario classic, and proper rebellion in the evangelical good girl context I grew up in), and wondering why my peers just didn’t “get me”, I would plan my mental funeral and hope that everyone would say nice things. Teenagers are inherently self-focused and need a lot of validation, I was no exception. We all just want to know that when it comes down to it, people do actually love us or even just like us. If mommy and daddy aren’t proud of you because of their relationships with shame and self-hatred, people your own age (or 30-year-old men that hang around your highschool) will. This idea of planning your mental funeral in times of emotional need returned to me the other day as I pondered my life. I’m rebuilding in a big way, I just wish someone had told me that building is hard when you don’t have a blueprint for your way of doing it, and you’ve rejected all the other blueprints that were available to you. I’ve lived so many lives for other people already - I’m trying to figure out what life I want to live for me. Yuck. It’s all so serious.

What I decided to do, in an incredibly unserious way, was to plan my own funeral and invite you all. Not like, for real for real. Just for fun. Like a party, but a funeral. What I say goes, because I’m dead, and I was incredible. Not because I spilled soup on myself in front of someone else that I deem is hotter and cooler than me, and decided that death is actually better. Spilling soup is a good metaphor for a lot of things. Instead of saying, I’m embarrassing, just say I spilled some goddamn soup.

If I were to die a tragic death right now, which will not happen because unfortunately I think the universe wants to play with my voodoo doll a little bit longer, I want it to be really chic and unexpected. I like the idea of a piano falling on me from above, because it feels very urban, but the placement would have to be perfect because I do plan on having an open casket. You can’t have a funeral for me and I don’t even get to wear a cute outfit to it, even if it’s just from the waist up. Another good death option would be that I found out I was allergic to goji berry oil too late, and I died at a Swedish spa during a full body massage from inhalation. My tombstone will say her skin was more radiant in death than it was in life. Either way, nobody will see it coming. The town of Victoria will shut down for a day. Elisabeth Atkinson is dead! We have no idea who that is but people should know about this, for sure. Tell the Uvic students. They will have a mutual aid fund and Instagram account up in two seconds with little fact-checking (I, myself, am an attendee of protests and registered Uvic student, so I, myself, can make this joke). Ban all pianos and goji berry oils. They are a scourge on society.

If this was my actual funeral, it would be family, friends, and my best ex as attendees only (listen to his band, it’s good). Since this is my fake funeral to make myself feel better, it’s open to the public. I want the whole town there. I want people I knew in highschool who stalk my Instagram stories to be there (I see you, I still think you are terrible, and I’ve always been cooler than you). I want every man who has ever had dinner with me to be there (I think there’s like ten of you, full stop). Yes, if I paid that still counts (up the count to twenty, I’m very generous). I want all of the people that work at the coffeeshops that I frequent to be there because I think I can trust you to dress well for the occasion. To begin the evening, I want a procession. But not like a sad procession. I want it to be Glee-esque. I want twinks in tight pants singing She’s A Bad Mama Jama as they carry my casket - which will be leopard skin with black velvet and chrome spikes on it. I’m very particular about flowers, because I’d like to think in another life I’m a florist. White and black flowers only, tons of orchids, and ornate arrangments that verge on abstract. I made a Pinterest board so you can get the vision (I’m very committed to my fake funeral). Guests are invited to wear black, brown, and grey. I myself will be wearing white. And I love the idea of wearing a veil, because corpse bride seems like a good theme these days (If you know the details of my personal life, shoutout to you).

When you walk into the building, which I’ve decided will be at the Christ Church Cathedral because it’s gorgeous and big and Anglican and has a graveyard there, I want there to be two tintype photographers taking portraits of everyone who comes, because it’s my fucking funeral and I have always wanted my tintype taken. You shall all live as I dreamed of living. After everyone has come to kiss my wrinkle-free forehead because the mortician pinned any excess skin that I have behind my ears (and I love them for that), the ceremony will begin. The actual service will be short and sweet, everyone will be seated in the pews and given the option of black forest cake, triple dark chocolate brownies, or popcorn (extra butta), and watch a slideshow of my best nudes and selfies that will be about eight and a half minutes long, set to the song Three by Britney Spears (a childhood favourite). Special attention will be given to the photos I took after getting really drunk in the bathtub, because to this day I don’t think I’ve taken better. If you have been on the receiving end of these nudes, you are welcome. After the slideshow, those closest to me will come and say a few words. I’m sure it will be mostly good stuff. The final closing of the ceremony will be a pre-recorded video that I made because I psychically knew that I would be carried to death’s door by a piano or goji berries and it was only a matter of time. The contents of the video will be me doing a get-ready-with-me on my private Instagram stories, ranking my favourite reality TV personalities and their best moments. I will then walk everyone through my creative process for the overall vision of the funeral, including feminist discourse and historical-socio-political context intertwined with my relationship to self and others, to create art in the modern sense. God, it was a lot of work, but somebody had to do it.

By the end, hopefully all will have laughed and cried and reminisced about how hot, funny, and cool I was. Men who have wronged me all over the world will collapse to the ground, wailing to the sky, “I have learned my lesson! I will never take a hot funny and cool girl for granted ever again as long as I live!” Then they will commit seppuku and no one will care about them because I did at one time but now I’m dead. The modern Romeo and Juliet. I’m getting horny just thinking about it. It’s my Virgo Venus.

The point of all this is that I’m making light of my grief. Who I was a year ago, three years ago, even six months ago has changed rapidly and I’m trying to figure out what it all means. I’ve had to let go of firmly set ideas, release my expectations of who I am and what I want from life, and embrace the realization that I’m the only one who will really get me there - wherever the fuck there is. Who I am now, and who I will be, will die over and over again, if I’m growing the way I’m meant to be. It’s supposed to get worse before it gets better. It’s time to let go of the me that I used to be, and get to know the me that I’m becoming. She is hopefully kinder, wiser, smarter, brighter. I just hope I don’t get worse (always a possibility). I wish I could just disappear for six months, away from society, so that nobody sees my mess or my failures or finds out that I think I’m not doing adulthood very well. In a sense, that’s why the idea of having a very fun sexy funeral sounds like a good idea. As long as people show up and are entertained, I did my job. That’s kind of what this whole blog is about. To the people who have been with me through many stretches of my journey, I’m so thankful for you. Even those that couldn’t stay, or didn’t deserve to. Thank you to everyone that knows me and (still) loves me. Thank you even to the little stinky haters, you motivate me to be a better person, out of spite. Thank you to those who don’t know me but root for me anyway, I love you more than you know. I tell myself that I’m going to figure it all out and be okay. Until then, thank you, for attending my funeral.

What I’m Into Lately:

Books: The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Set in BC, beautifully written, an exploration of death and dying, abuse, PTSD, and madness. The main character’s name is Beth. I came upon this book by accident, although I don’t really believe in accidents.

Music:

Loading by James Blake | He never disappoints. It’s angsty and about love so I’m already fully invested. A good beat makes the pain danceable. It’s also 4 minutes and 44 seconds long.

FE!N by Travis Scott & Playboy Carti | If I’m on my worst behaviour, I am stomping around to this. Which I am, often.

In the Music by The Roots | I stole this song from a hook up who made a playlist for me. Cheers! I will never text you back.

The Groke by Okay Kaya | I loooove this artist. Funky, silly, spiritual, cool, scary. Everything you’d want.