Its morbid but I am going to write about it anyway

 I have been thinking about what I would want after I pass away. 

I know, it is morbid to think about it, but I have been since my dad is getting older and he had his stroke, and I have been looking closer at my health.

Anyway. . . . .I think I have some of the most different views on topics that I don't really hear from others.  What happens after I pass away will be no different, I guess.

One of the most craziest things I can think of after a person passes is for people to walk by the body lying in a casket. I just can't do that anymore. The last memory of my grandpa and my grandma and my cousin and a colleague are of them laying in a casket. And you know what? I hated it. I hate that the last memory I have of how they looked. It didn't look like them and they had no resemblance to the person I knew. 

And that is the last memory of them I have. 

And I hate those memories. 

You know what? I don't want the last thing a person remembers of me is the image of my empty body that is made up to look like I am still there and laid out in a casket in clothes I probably would never wear. I never understood why people do that. I will not be there in that body. I will be sitting with the Lord and meeting all my family in heaven. I don't want a bunch of people walking by a dead empty husk of my body. No. I don't want that. Just skip the showing and the casket and the funeral home and the funeral. . . and just turn my empty body back into ashes.

You know what would be an honor to me? I am a giver. I give gifts and things to people that I personally make with my own hands. I like to build stuff and giving gifts is how I show how much I care about people. You see, the passage that is at the end of Fahrenheit 451 is how I think of people.

Paraphrased it says:

Everyone always leaves something behind when he or she dies. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes they made. Or a garden planted. Something their hand touched in some way so that their soul has somewhere to go when they die, and when people look at that tree that they planted, or the painting they painted, they're there. It doesn't matter what they do so long as they change something from the way it was before they touched it into something that's like them after they take their hands away.“

 - adapted from Fahrenheit 451

 So, let's do this - I would like everyone that I have given a gift to or a drawing or something I built or written to them to create an Art Gallery for everyone to walk through. I would like a posterboard that people can write anything I said to them that made an impact on them. That's how I want people to "see" me for one last time. Because that is really who I am and that would be the last memory that I would want people to have of me. 

 I may or may not have had a long life but I have done what I set out to do. I have had a job that I enjoyed, and a home that I have made and a wife that I loved. I had my two boys that I had the privilege of raising and friends that I have been blessed with. I would probably not want to go (especially if I was leaving my wife) but I would not regret where I am. . . . was . . . in my life. So, I want people to think back of how they felt with what I gave them or something I taught them or when I spent time with them or gave a bit of old man wisdom.

 And I want smiles instead of tears. Ok? 

That would honor me and the life I lived the most. 

Oh, and have lots of food and just enjoy the day.