More quoting of Thomas Lynch:

"My friend, the poet, Matthew Sweeney, is certain he is dying. This is a conviction he had held, without remission, since 1952 when he first saw the light, in its gray Irish version, in Ballyliffin, in northernmost Donegal. He knew even then, though he was some years from the articulation of this intelligence, that something was very, very wrong."

"We had buried my mother that morning. We stood in the gray midmorning at Holy Sepulchre watching the casket go into its vault, a company of the brokenhearted at the death of a good woman...I was trying to remember my mother's voice. The tumor had taken it from her in doses. I was beginning to panic because I'd never hear her voice again, the soft contralto full of wisdom and the acoustics of safety."

"And the life on either side of that moment was nothing but heartache and affection, romance and hurt, laughter and waking, wakes and leavetakings, lovemaking and joys--the horizontal mysteries."

"As much as I'd like to have a handle on the past and future, the moment I live in is the one I have. Here is how the moment instructs me: clouds float in front of the moon's face, lights flicker in the carved heads of pumpkins, leaves rise in the wind at random, saints go nameless, love comforts, souls sing beyond the reach of bodies."

Jack Handy Deep Thoughts

"Instead of having answers on a math test, they should just call them impressions, and if you got a different impression, so what, can't we all be brothers?"

Back to Lynch:

"At one end of life the community declares Is alive, it stinks, we'd better do something. At the other end we echo, Its dead, it stinks, we'd better do something."

And the last essay entitled Tract is one of the best culmination essays I've come across in my days of reading essays, which is about, appropriately, his own funeral.

The opening section is as follows. The rest is worth reading as well:

I'd rather it be February. Not that it will matter much to me. Not that I'm a stickler for details. But since you're asking -- February. The month I first became a father, the month my father died. Yes. Better even than November.

I want it cold. I want the gray to inhabit the air like wood does trees: as an essence not a coincidence. And the hope for springtime, gardens, romance, dulled to a stump by the winter in Michigan.

Yes, February. With the cold behind and the cold before you and the darkness stubborn at the edges of the day. And a wind to make the cold more bitter. So that ever after it might be said, "It was a sad old day we did it after all."

And a good frosthold on the ground so that, for nights before it is dug, the sexton will have had to go up and put a fire down, under the hood that fits the space, to soften the topsoil for the backhoe's toothy bucket.

Wake me. Let those who want to come and look. They have their reasons. You'll have yours. And if someone says, "Doesn't he look natural!" take no offense. They've got it right. For this was always in my nature. It's in yours.

And have the clergy take their part in it. Let them take their best shot. If they're ever going to make sense to you, now's the time. They're looking, same as the rest of us. The questions are more instructive than the answers. Be wary of anyone who knows what to say.

As for music, suit yourselves. I'll be out of earshot, stone deaf. A lot can be said for pipers and tinwhistlers. But consider the difference between a funeral with a few tunes and a concert with a corpse down front. Avoid, for your own sakes, anything you've heard in the dentist's office or the roller rink.

Poems might be said. I've had friends who were poets. Mind you, they tend to go on a bit. Especially around horizontal bodies. Sex and death are their principle studies. It is here where the services of an experienced undertaker are most appreciated. Accustomed to being personae non grata, they'll act the worthy editor and tell the bards when it's time to put a sock in it.