I don’t want no funeral. I don’t want no wake. There will be no closing me up in some dark, stuffy box with nothing but grubs and stale memories to keep me company. When I go, toss me to the wind. Return me to ashes. Take me to some distant hilltop and scatter me to the earth where the wind and rain and the ever changing elements will blend me with the dirt and wash me to the shore and forever sweep me here and there until the end of days. No tears, no black garb and sullen faces. I want my friends and family and all those who loved me to gather in a little pub somewhere, order a few pints, and clink to me a toast of farewell.

There is nothing more depressing than the thought of a cathedral filled with people mourning over me, passing by the bier shedding tears and dispensing words of goodbye to a shell that no longer houses the soul. Remember me as I lived, not the lifeless husk that I will have become. I shudder at that thought.

And while you are in the little bar with lights dimmed and the conversational hum of those who truly loved me buoying a night that will be memorable but not melancholy, I want an album to play in perpetuity over the stereo or jukebox or whatever they have available. Knowing me, you would think it would be a jazz album. But if you really know me, you know that it could only be one album, one collection of songs that have entranced and embraced me for five years now.

When I die, I want you to play Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. From the title song to Slim Slow Slider and back again. Play it over and over until the last bar patron has donned his cap and ventured out into the cold, damp evening, searching for his car keys and deep down wondering when his final moments will arrive and if he will be ready. And then when you are one day driving in your car or at the theater watching a movie or having a bite at the corner deli and a song from Astral Weeks begins to play, I hope your eyes well with tears. I hope that you are collapsed by the beauty of the record as well as by the memories that it evokes. I hope that every image brings you happiness and an intense knowledge that though I am gone from this earth, if I am lucky, I am somewhere as beautiful as the pictures painted by that odd little man from Belfast with a voice inimitable and a verbal gait, slow and enticing.

Oh sweet thing, sweet thing
My, my, my, my, my sweet thing
And I will raise my hand up
Into the night time sky
And count the stars
That’s shining in your eye