Grandpa is dead.
We're all here. It's just really bad. People I haven't seen for twenty years come by to pay their last respects. They're all dressed in black, looking depressed. We go into the funeral parlour. It is quiet, silent.
The funeral speaker steps forward. ‘Dear mourners. A special person has passed away. He has made a final wish. This wish is very unusual. You all know him and will therefore probably not be very surprised. But it is unusual.’ With great gravitas, he goes to the music system, presses a few buttons. Nods. Turns round and looks at us expectantly.
A soft noise starts up, increases, speeds up, electronic sounds hit us and after less than 30 seconds we are bombarded with a bass-heavy trance song. Three people scurry out of a side room and start dancing to the music. Mum starts to laugh as she continues to cry. My uncle shakes his head and buries his face in his hands. We granddaughters grin wryly, my son starts swaying to the rhythm of the music.
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The song ends and the dancers leave the room. People murmur amongst themselves and the funeral speaker steps forward again. He struggles for a moment to regain his stony seriousness. ‘The deceased had a last wish for you, dear mourners. I will now read it out.’
‘I was a person with many sides and interests. Now it is up to you to preserve me in this diversity. We are more than just joy and sadness, love and hate. We deprive ourselves of many facets out of reverence, fear or because we are desperate. What is worth preserving does not have to be aesthetic or interesting, it does not have to generate envy or make you melt away with romance. It can be all that and much more. My greatest longing is for you, like me, to curiously pursue what confuses and enchants you, sometimes revelling in nostalgia and sometimes looking to the future with pride. At the crossroads of all this diversity, we will meet every day.’
I have to smile. Even in death, Grandpa still manages to make us marvel, to make us feel the immeasurable greatness of life.