“God, I love a good funeral!”

-Admiral Benson, 'Hot Shots!'

Planning a funeral is a somber and heavy task. It’s a task that nobody would wish on anyone, but a task that nevertheless is necessary. Some of us may be able to hire an Event Planner to coordinate a funeral, but for those who would prefer to send their loved ones off with a personal touch, or perhaps simply can’t afford a planner, where do you start?

First off, if you are reading this article after the loss of a loved one- take a breather. It’s not right to have to put your grief aside because you have to put up a strong front. I’ll take the liberty of giving a piece of advice, approach this lightheartedly. Don’t mourn the dead, but rather humor their memory. 

The First Reason- It’ll Make Your Life Easier

Planning is not easy work, and you don’t have all the time in the world to plan when you are on a literal biological clock (corpses don’t keep forever). If you’ve never dealt with a funeral and it comes to you to plan it, then not only will you have to organize it, but you’ll have to learn how as well. So hopefully you’ve already read this article and a few others so you’re ready to tackle the job. Imagine having to deal with the predicament of a funeral and more, like in the case of Kathleen McCleary. Her father passed away and they had set a date for the funeral a week later, Kathleen recalls that a day after her father’s death “my mother collapsed and was taken to the emergency room with what we thought was a heart attack, but turned out to be stomach flu. My brother and I then both got the stomach flu, while planning my father’s funeral.” So don’t get caught with your pants down when life gives you the unexpected, unless you are dealing with stomach flu.

The Second Reason- As dark as it is, if you are going to plan your own funeral, then you can make sure you can get the Last laugh

Millions of people pass every year without proper arrangements for their burial or aftercare. While some of you may be saying that you don’t care what happens after your death, I’ll insist that nobody truly dies until their name is completely forgotten. If you are undecided or apathetic about how your arrangements will work after death, then take a page from my book and see about making your next funeral a shebang- Here.

The Third Reason – You can help someone else having to plan a funeral, and in the words of an anonymous internet user, ‘Put the FUN in FUNeral.’

Grief is a strange and complex emotion. You can see grief expressed through crying, laughing, anger, and a myriad of other possible human reactions. I’m of the stout opinion that laughter is the best grief expression tool, especially at a funeral. You could get everyone riled up about that inheritance and start a fistfight over Dad’s Rolex or Mom’s necklace, but why not put them in tears through laughter instead? Then you can pry that solid gold class ring from your grandfather’s dead, cold, rigor mortised hands in peace while the rest of the funeral arrangement are unable to see you through the tears in their eyes. More seriously though, if you know somebody going through a funeral, you know for sure they are having a rough time. Do what you can to take the load off their shoulders. Even if it’s a simple as an ‘I see dead people,’ joke, heed the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, “Man uses the comical as a therapy against the restraining jacket of logic, morality and reason. He needs from time to time a harmless demotion from reason and hardship.”

There is nothing more logical, more reasonable than the finality of death, thankfully for those comedians out there the more logical, unarguable a subject is, the funnier your derived comments can be.