We’ve been round the table a few times lately about funerals.
Sounds morbid, but it’s a reality check. We’ve found a way to make it rather enjoyable. We call it “throw your own party” and work through ways we’d send ourselves off.
It started as a discussion about Geoffrey and how we’d play our cards when the time comes for him to make his way up the stairway to the pearly gates.
Geoffrey’s always been my best mate, although memories from 40 years ago are the only way we can converse these days as he battles dementia while drinking tea and chewing custard in the back halls of the aged care home.
I’ll listen to the way he threw a cut-out pass to Bomber Jackson in the 1968 grand final to secure victory. I’ll listen to it 20 times in a day as I change the poor old fellow’s singlet and shirt, both which have been sprayed with oatmeal and orange juice.
Yet, even he contributed to our game. While catching a glimpse of Warnie’s service during the week, he asked if he could have a big screen at his send off. Geoffrey can’t remember what he had for breakfast, but he’s agile enough to know how great it would be to have well wishes beamed to a big television in front of a huge audience.
It’s nice to re-live stories, many of them we’ve been telling at family gatherings every Christmas, Easter and birthday since the 60s and 70s, and rest assured there’s plenty of mustard, mayonnaise and fairy dust been sprinkled on those tales since that time.
They’re still believable, but some of them precariously tenuous to their bare truth.
Wanda rolls her eyes so hard her lashes just about spring from their lids when she hears how we’ve tampered with the truth. She was at the scene of the crime. She knows how far the truth has been bent.
Geoffrey’s stories have lost the added ingredients. He calls it as he saw it. And I take some comfort in knowing he’s quite proud of where life took him all those years.
He’ll leave us at some point, and I too got some ideas from Warnie’s service.
We’ll get some of the boys from the premiership team to reminisce on stage. Probably not the MCG but we should be able to fill the east wing of the sub-branch.
We’ll ask that nice young fellow who plays violin at Tuesday morning line dancing to pop out a tribute tune. He’s no Ed Sheeran, Robbie Williams or Elton John, but beggars can’t be choosers. The guy’s got a happy knack of getting everyone off the benches and on to the dance floor. Really, what more do we want?
We won’t do signage, but we’ll name one of the tables in the bistro in his honour. It’ll be his legacy. Everyone who eats there can be reminded of Geoffrey in his ticket selling days. Nobody got away without buying a meat tray raffle ticket on the nights Geoffrey was in charge, and the club was eternally grateful.
Maybe we could put a book of raffle ticket stubs under the wobbly leg in honour of Geoffrey’s tenacity to get things right.
Who knows. I may well embark on the old stairway to the big club in the sky before my mate. In that case, I’ll be the one with the table named in my honour.
Either way, we’re fine tuning the plans. And we’ll continue to do so as long as we’re able. If I’m gone first, Geoffrey can get his own damn service plan.
And I’ll be the one to have had the pleasure of bringing people together in the east wing as they tell all who’ll listen what a great bloke I was.
Having done part of the planning, everyone there will have the comfort that I’ve brought them together the way I wanted to bring them together, and the good times will all be thanks to me.
