My mother-in-law was buried today. Lots of flowers and beautiful singing, as she herself had wanted it to be. Had she been there to see it, she would have liked it.

Afterwards the bells rang not with the sonorous, melodious sound that I love but with harsh tones that were almost painful to hear. I don’t know if it was due to these particular bells or my state of mind, but it felt fitting.

If my funeral were to be arranged to my wishes (which is not a given, because a funeral is for the sake of those who are there and not for the one who isn’t!) mine would not look like this, regardless of how lovely this was.

Most importantly, it wouldn’t be a religious funeral. I’m not a member of the Church of Sweden and that is a very conscious decision. I don’t have the least bit of Christian faith in me. No prayers, no benedictions, no sermons about how I will now be in a better place, no psalms.

Organ music is beautiful, though; I can enjoy all of Bach’s chorals despite their Christian origins. Still, for my funeral I’d rather have, say, Thea Gilmore’s Sol Invictus, or perhaps Helen Sjöholm’s Då väntar jag vid vägarna. Maybe I’ll win the lottery and die filthy rich and then you can get Thea Gilmore to sing at my funeral.

If I could choose, I’d die in the middle of summer so the service could be outside, in the sun, in some green and flowering place. Instead of princess cake, how about a chocolate mousse cake?

Afterwards it would be rather nice to simply be rolled up in a shroud and then buried somewhere in the woods just like that, to be eaten by worms and all the other little creatures. Or perhaps cremated and spread with the winds and the waters. I would not want to be shut in a coffin, if it was up to me.