I’ll be turning 65 next month. And while I’m not planning on retiring, let alone dying, anytime soon, those landmark birthdays — and additional senior citizen discounts — can certainly inspire a person to ruminate on the past and ponder how ready they are for the future.
Maybe it was watching the coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday, with commentators repeatedly reminding us that many aspects of this royal sendoff have been planned for decades.
It seems I’ve been receiving brochures from funeral homes since I was in my late 40s. “Are you ready? Do your loved ones know your wishes?”
Yes, I need to make those practical decisions: Should I donate my body to science? If “to dust I shall return,” what cool places should I ask my family to have fun gathering while they scatter my ashes to the winds?
Finding a poem for a funeral reading is important, too. I’m partial to Billy Collins’ “The Afterlife,” in which he posits that each person who dies goes to exactly the place they, individually, always imagined — from a heavenly choir to reincarnation as an animal.
However, paramount in my recent planning for the Final Countdown has been a more important consideration: After I dance my final tango with the Grim Reaper, what music should be played at a memorial service for one Mary Ellen Wright? How do I want to entertain my loved ones after I’m gone, and what musical message do I want to leave about who I was?
I’m not much of a “hymn person” these days. My memorial song choices will need to be a bit more unconventional.
I think I actually started pondering all this about 40 years ago. In 1981, while working for a newspaper in Stroudsburg, I covered a funeral for the owner of a jazz bar who had been murdered. A baritone sang a soulful rendition of the Duke Ellington standard “(In My) Solitude,” and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Then and there, I thought: I want that sung at my funeral someday.
Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith performs at Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles in 2006. His “God Loves Everyone” is a song with an ecumenical message.
It’s still on the “possible” list. It’s mournful, but I’m torn on whether the lyrics really express what I want to say, since it includes being “haunted” by an old love. But I like the idea of celebrating the solitary parts of my life — and reminding my loved ones of that whole “haunting” thing. If this tune makes the final cut, it will have to be the rendition by Ella Fitzgerald — one of my favorite singers.
One song I definitely want on my memorial program is “God Loves Everyone,” by the Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith. Its message about God’s love and acceptance of all people — sinners and saints, believers and unbelievers — pretty much represents my personal theology.
I love the tune for lines such as “Hell is in our minds / Hell is in this life / But when it’s done, God takes everyone.”
(You can hear a lovely 2009 rendition of the song by Lancaster County’s own Jonathan Groff, performed at a New York nightclub, online at lanc.news/GroffGodLovesEveryone.)
Going to the theater is one of my great passions in life, so, of course, there needs to be a Broadway showtune in the mix. That’s still up in the air, but Stephen Sondheim’s “Move On,” from “Sunday in the Park With George,” is a prime candidate. Its lyrics say much about creativity and life choices. And it would leave family and friends with the message to keep living and creating: “Just keep moving on / Anything you do / Let it come from you / Then it will be new / Give us more to see.”
But I’m also so nuts about “The Sound of Music” that a family favorite, the jaunty “So Long, Farewell,” might just kick Sondheim off the set list. That would make my family smile, and sing “cuckoo!”
A memorial service, I think, needs a singalong — especially if I’m not planning for a hymn to be included.
I’ve long thought “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” sung in unison, could really bring a congregation together. Wherever I am in the Great Beyond — maybe talking with Judy Garland! — I’m sure I’ll just want to hear that song one more time, sung from the heart by the people I care about.
An alternative, also containing a “rainbow’s end,” would be another of my all-time favorites, “Moon River,” which I’ve adored since the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” sheet music sat on our family piano in the 1960s. Andy Williams’ dulcet tones promise we’ll meet again, around the bend, my Huckleberry friend.
My family has a fondness for having the “a time to be born, a time to die” verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes read at memorials. So perhaps having the folks sing along to “Turn, Turn, Turn,” by The Byrds — Pete Seeger’s reformulation of the Bible verse — might help keep everyone in a positive frame of mind.
And how to send my family and friends out into the world after saying farewell?
I’ve got a couple of final-encore ideas that I think will help them put away their hankies.
I was in college during the height of the disco years, and I was, and continue to be, a Disco Duck. Sorry, friends, but a disco song is de rigueur at my memorial. What better tune than the uptempo “Born to Be Alive,” by Patrick Hernandez? I may have shuffled off my mortal coil, but nieces, nephews, friends — you were born to be alive, and to continue to live.
Another must-have: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” by Cyndi Lauper. In interviews, the pop singer and composer said she wrote it with her mother in mind — a mom Lauper didn’t think had enough choices in her life.
I’m so grateful to have been raised in a home, and grown up in a time, where I’ve always known I had lots of choices — a choice of career, a choice of where to live, a choice of whether or not to get married — that I want to celebrate that during my final farewell, with Lauper’s anthem.
While listening to area musicians Bobbi Carmitchell and Ashley McFalls singing the Indigo Girls song “Galileo” as they performed one of their daily Facebook Live concerts during the early months of the pandemic, I realized how much I love that song. Its lyrics can take the listener down many philosophical paths. “How long till my soul gets it right? Can any human being ever reach that kind of light?”
That might be just the right tone on which to end a memorial service. Amen and amen.
If I’m granted anywhere close to the number of years Queen Elizabeth had on this Earth, my memorial set list may morph into something completely different in the future.
But whatever the music is, I hope it will serve as a comfort to those I leave behind — and as a chance to think, tap their toes and smile a little.
“Unscripted” is a weekly entertainment column produced by a rotating team of writers.
