Collection of eulogies breathes life into death

I rather dislike funerals.

When the time comes for me to leave this world, I don’t want one. I’d much prefer my friends and family to gather for a clambake and a long after-dinner stroll on my favorite beach in Connecticut where they can trade embarrassing stories about me.

I hope they play music and dance and sing and talk about how hot-headed yet tender-hearted their dearly departed was, and how much she loved to dance and sing and watch others do the same (even if she did usually make fun of them) and how much they loved her in spite of herself.

No casket. Cremation, please. And don’t keep me on a shelf. Scatter the ashes somewhere inspiring and dramatic, like off the tip of Malin Head in County Donegal where the waves crash into the cliffs, or anywhere along the Gallatin Range near Big Sky, Montana.

There is a smallish part of me that, not unlike John Cusack’s character in “High Fidelity,” hopes perhaps some weeping loved one might insist on singing “You’re the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me,” or something equally schmaltzy.

But the larger part of me hopes they’ll tell good stories, and not just the nice, clean ones.

Normally I don’t spend much time entertaining thoughts of my own mortality, never mind what the plans for my after-death entertainment might be. Even on the eve of Halloween, All Saints and All Souls days.

But a unique — and, at first pass pretty maudlin-sounding — book arrived on my desk recently called Farewell, Godspeed: The Greatest Eulogies of Our Time, and it got me thinking about death. And life.

Farewell, Godspeed is a collection of more than 60 eulogies for celebrities and other public figures as varied as Sammy Davis, Duke Ellington, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Janis Joplin, delivered by other celebrities and notables, including Garrison Keillor, Fidel Castro, Winona Ryder and Ronald Reagan.

Instead of a sad, tearful read, I found the book, which is arranged by categories such as “Wisecrackers,” “Wordsmiths” and “Matinee Idols,” strangely joyful.

Cyrus Copeland, the fellow who edited Farewell, Godspeed, wasn’t surprised by my response.

Apparently lots of readers have been telling him things like, “I expected them to be a lot sadder and heavier than I found them to be in your book,” and “They made me think about what I wanted to do in my own life,” Copeland was telling me the other day.

Eulogies often say just as much about the person delivering them as they do about the person being eulogized, Copeland says. And, if done well, should, in one way or another, inspire those listening.

“These are people who really took their 15 minutes and kind of stretched it into a lifetime of accomplishment,” he said of the departed souls in his collection.

The best eulogies are given by people who knew the deceased well, and aren’t afraid to honor them warts and all.

“There’s a way to be honest without being reductive or unkind,” Copeland says, offering an example from his book where Neil Simon eulogized his good friend Bob Fosse. At one point in Fosse’s eulogy, Simon explains, in some detail, how his friend of 30 years was a flagrant cheater — at croquet.

Among my favorite eulogies in Copeland’s collection was George Harrison’s by Monty Pythonian Eric Idle, Gilda Radner’s by her writing partner Alan Zweibel, and Gianni Versace by Madonna.

But the one that really killed me for its humor and poignancy was the eulogy Charlie Matthau delivered at the 2000 memorial service for his father, Walter, at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles. Here’s the passage that left me thoroughly verklempt:

“My father has made me believe that there may be something after this life. And if there is, I’ll look for him the first moment I cross over and I’ll give him the biggest hug ever, and I’ll start kissing him all over his cheeks and hugging him some more, until he says, ‘Stop that, Charlie, people will think we’re a couple of faygeles.’ ”

Of the sixty-odd eulogies in Farewell, Godspeed, Walt Whitman’s, which was delivered by his friend Robert Green Ingersoll graveside in 1892, has the best last line, what we in the news business call the “kicker.”

“And so I lay this little wreath upon this great man’s tomb,” Ingersoll so eloquently said some 112 years ago at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, N.J. “I loved him living, and I love him still.”

Copeland thinks it’s perfect.

“Now that’s the way to say goodbye,” he says.

The idea to collect the best eulogies of the last 100 years or so came about after Copeland wrote and delivered the eulogy for his father, Max, in 1992.

“I just kind of talked very personally about him,” Copeland says of his father’s eulogy. “There was a particular memory from my childhood which carried forward and continues to carry forward as one of the best days of my life.”

Copeland, a Muslim who is half Iranian, recalls traveling to Iran, where his father took him and his sister to a lush valley in an otherwise arid part of the country.

“This was resplendent with chlorophyll and partridge and dove and creeks and berries. Magical,” Copeland recalls. When the family returned to the United States, Copeland asked his father to show him on a map exactly where the magical valley had been so he could return some day.

But his father refused. “He said the best way for this valley to continue is to continue its existence in my imagination.”

Max Copeland was a wise man.

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