A few requests.
First and foremost: No flowers. Let me myself really clear on this subject. My funeral will probably be a winter affair. Nothing better than a bout of freezing weather to kill a beautiful flower. Some like to bring a rose and toss it on the casket. Please don’t. Waste of a rose. Keep the rose at home. No Flowers. Can I make this any clearer? No flowers.
Contributions: Please contribute something to your favorite charity. Please do not give to any of the cancer associations. They have enough money. They are spending it, by and large, in the wrong places. Fighting, conquering, finding a cure, for something that should not be fought, and cannot be cured. The language is wrong. The goals misplaced.  Please give to a charity of your choice.
Planting: Trees. Plant trees. Somewhere, anywhere. Fruit trees are best. They announce themselves with a bevy of flowers in the spring, provide us with lovely fruit later in the season. Plant some in schools in your neighborhood. The students could use the education and beauty. My personal preference would be for sour or wild cherries. The top layer of fruits feed the birds and squirrels. The bottom layer we get to pick. Little maintenance required.
Funeral Arrangements: These are almost complete. MC is chosen and has accepted his role very gracefully. The opening prayer will be chanted by Taravat, prayer for the dead will be read by my sister in law Barbara. Nancy and Diana would like to say a couple of words. I have to select someone to read the closing prayer. Frank Cummings, the MC, has control over everything else. If anyone else wants to say something, please speak up and we will add you to the program. Look forward to seeing you all there.
From E.E. Cummings:
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
I just closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around you and gave you a big hug.
did you fill it?
love you,
Taravat
Dear, sweet Farokh….it' so hard to read this posting, but I'm grateful I know your wishes. Totally agree with you on the flowers…what a waste. I can still remember the terrible smell of the hundreds of flowers at the funeral home for my Dad.
I will happily plant many trees in your honour at the homes of all my loved ones…so each time I visit their homes, I will be reminded of you. Love you lots….big hug and lots of kisses…..
Thinking about you as I continue to procrastinate tonight. Should be ready to leave for Puerto Rico by now with an early flight. Don't want to go. Have not put a flip flop in a bag. Thinking of you.
Dearest Friend
It is getting harder to read your blogs. But at the same time, it is harder to stay away from it.
Today the following words echo loudly: " For everything there is a sign. The sign of love is fortitude under My decree and patience under My trials."
God must REALLY love you!
We sure DO love you heaps and bounds.
your friend always,
Janet
This is very long Farokh, and just for you. It is the most beautiful passage about death I know, from my favourite book, The Third Policeman: Down into the earth where dead men go I would go soon and maybe come out of it again in some healthy way, free of human perplexity. I would perhaps be the chill of an April wind, an essential part of some indomitable river or be personally concerned in the ageless perfection of some rank mountain bearing down upon the mind by occupying forever a position in the blue easy distance. Or perhaps a smaller thing like movement in the grass on an unbearable breathless yellow day, some hidden creature going about its business — I might well be responsible for that or some small part of it. Or even those unaccountable distinctions that make an evening recognizable from its own morning, the smells and sounds and sights of the perfected and matured essences of the day, these might not be innocent of my meddling and my abiding presence.
Or perhaps I would be an influence that prevails in water, something sea-borne and far away, some certain arrangement of sun, light and water unknown and unbeheld, something far from usual. There are in the great world whirls of fluid and vaporous existences obtaining in their own unpassing time, unwatched and uninterpreted, valid only in their essential un-understandable mystery, justified only in their eyeless and mindless immeasurability, unassailable in their actual abstraction: of the inner quality of such a thing I might well in my own time be the true quintessential pith. I might belong to a lonely shore or be the agony of the sea when it bursts upon it in despair.
Love, Gita