The Eyes Have It

Going to a funeral is one of the easiest ways to get friends and family members talking about what they do and do not want to happen at their own funeral. Perhaps it's some element of keeping up with the Joneses or a general affinity for having an opinion about most anything — services we like we hope to emulate, services we dislike we tell our loved ones in hushed voices, "Don't you ever let them do that to me." When I was young, I'd been to more than half a dozen funerals before I made it to my first wedding. It wasn't that my family was morbid — they were just old. I don't remember much by way of specifics other than always thinking that I liked the fresh flower arrangements better than the fake flowers; that caskets seemed really big and heavy; that it was weird to be in a room with a bunch of crying people; and that the person being buried had on way too much makeup. It was the makeup that first clued me in to the fact that a body is not a p