Earlier this year Donna and I were on the patio having a bit of wine and somehow the subject of what we would want as our final arrangements came up. At our age, probably appropriate.

For myself personally, I don’t particularly want a funeral per se. In my mind, funerals are not for the dead but for the living. When God says it’s time, I’ll be gone and there will be no looking down from heaven to see what kind of funeral I’m having and who showed up. I told my wife that she and the children should make it easy on themselves. The only thing I would ask is that our pastor do the internment service.

I reminded her that we don’t have many close friends – mostly just acquaintances and not a large numbers of those. So it might be a bit embarrassing to the family to have a wake, viewing, visitation or whatever it’s called these days plus a funeral and only 7 or 8 people show up. But in the end it was up to her and she should not feel any guilt if she chose to just have an internment service.