I WAS intrigued and not a little enchanted by a story that emerged last week about the increasing popularity of living funerals. These events, it seems, occur when the host, beset by a terminal illness, expresses a desire to bid a fond farewell to friends and loved ones. 

Tim Maguire, a Humanist celebrant, wrote a splendid account of conducting a living funeral in The Herald last week. “It takes courage to accept our own mortality,” he wrote. “The Stoics were among the first people to get the paradox that the way to live a full and rewarding life is to embrace the fact that we are going to die.” 

He quoted the Roman philosopher and emperor Marcus Aurelius, who, as well as saying “there is always someone left to fight” in Gladiator, wrote: “Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favour; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.”

Rather touchingly, living funerals also provide a solution to that emotional numbness that sets in when an old friend or relative dies and you didn’t have time to see them properly before they breathed their last. 

And, of course, it allows those of us who may find ourselves thus afflicted to participate in that undertaking that every one of us desires but, until now, has always proved elusive: attend your own funeral and hear what everyone really thinks of you. 

Yes, I know that a living funeral as currently portrayed by its advocates is all about warmth, affection and, perhaps, inadequately expressed love. 

Let’s be honest here: those of us who are male and from the west of Scotland tend to become sheepish and withdrawn when faced with a situation that calls for expressions of love tactile empathy. But I’d want mine also to include recrimination, accusations, and a hint of fury.  

A deadly decade  
I QUITE fancy arranging one of those living funerals – and sooner rather than later. In fact, I’d be for arranging them on an annual basis to replace birthdays. Let’s speak frankly here: in this part of Scotland, when a male enters his seventh decade he’s effectively venturing into the sniper’s alley of life. 

I’d also be for inviting people who may not have appreciated your wit and charm throughout life and who always had you down as a bit of a horse’s fundament.

By inviting them to your living funeral, you’re giving them an opportunity to get things off their chest and to tell you how it really is. At this stage of your life you should be well beyond giving a Friar Tuck about what anyone else thinks anyway. 

More importantly, though, it may give you pause to reflect on your failures and malfeasances while others are telling you what a prince you were. And, obviously, one of your annual living funerals really will become your last one. 

And instead of holding it on your birthday, you could hold it on a significant date in your life: such as the anniversary of your favourite football team winning the European Cup. 

It mean, too, that you can seek forgiveness and acknowledge your weapon-like conduct before The Lord prior to making your appearance before St Peter. I think it would do wonders for Scotland’s collective mental health and sense of wellbeing. 

Life is Swede 
SEEING as we’re contemplating life’s last things, I must also tell you of another discovery I made last week about death’s other life-enhancing properties. This has been described by its advocates as The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. 

Basically, it’s a sort of final Feng Shui – a So Long Shui, perhaps – by which you divest yourself of all the clutter and chaos you’ve gathered as you count down the days and months to your inevitable denouement. As well as being all diverse, sustainable and sustainably diverse, it relieves your loved ones from the emotional burden of deciding what to do with the worthless crap you insisted on hoarding throughout your existence. 

Looking around my modest abode right now, there is – more or less – the square root of f*** all anyone else would want to have, save for a few old scraps of Celtic memorabilia and some books on subjects about which none of my four children will have the merest interest. 

The furniture – save for a couple of items that I’m told are “mid-century” – is of the unloved Utilitaristico e Functionale scuola of Italian interior design. There is nothing of Ikea and Habitat. What documents there are mainly tell a sinewy tale of financial chaos. 

There are one or two written remnants of old relationships that I should probably burn lest they cause embarrassment to those concerned for their temporary lapses in taste and sound judgment. 

Wake neighbours
IN keeping with this week’s theme of happy deaths, I must commend once more My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love and Die. This wonderful book, written by my esteemed friend Kevin Toolis, is a homage to the rituals of death, as he comes home to rural Ireland to bury his dad.  

It asks us to embrace death and to observe in its ceremonials and traditions a form of healing and an opportunity to examine our relationships, and to evaluate the ways in which we have chosen to live our lives. 

It’s also a rebuke to the absurd lengths to which we go in our Anglo-Saxon denial to avoid speaking of death, or even to name it, choosing instead a lexicon of avoidance such as “passed away” or the even more ridiculous “passed”. 

It’s about far more than this, though, and needs to be read slowly. I’ve rarely read a book with so much love, wit and pathos, nor one that conveys so much compassion and understanding of humans as they live, suffer and die.