I am always coming up with more hymns that I want sung at my funeral. As if it’s going to be some gigantic sing-along. I guess I can’t imagine anyone eulogizing me, so I imagine lots of songs? Whatever. But as we were singing “Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand” tonight, I felt like it had to be included also. At least all of my hymns are thematically about death and bodily resurrection, I’m tidy that way.
Search This Classical Life:
categories:
in the middle of:
read in 2016:
Paterson, The Great Gilly Hopkins
Sloan, Ajax Penumbra 1969
Mandel, Station Eleven
Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty
Shakespeare, As You Like It
Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saintsarchives:
A giant sing-along doesn’t sound like a bad way to be remembered. I’m the same way about this, so you’re not alone. :)
I keep a list of songs that family can choose from when planning my funeral. So, I can add more songs without making the funeral three days long. I also have instructions to the preacher and the scripture passages picked out. I think it’s great that 20-somethings plan their funeral. Too many pretend that death is fiction.
So I’m not the only person who does this? Whew! Now, I just need to write this list down on paper, b/c a list in my head isn’t going to do my family any good.
you could always have a hymn-sing instead of visiting hours or a prayer service…
Mine is “What Wondrous Love is This” — the RUF/Indelible Grace version, of course.
“… and when from death I’m free I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on…”
I can relate…I’m glad I’m not the only one that does this. :)
I do it too!!!!
I love “For All the Saints”, “Rock of Ages” “Jesus Lives and So Shall I” and “The Sands of Time Are Sinking”.
oh. wow. my list on this is really long. like, really long.
and I’ll add that for some mysterious reason, playing for funerals is something that I happen to really appreciate. a friend’s mother died a couple years ago, and I’ll never forget playing through the song “my jesus I love thee”. there was a girl singing the song and she broke down on the last verse (“in mansions of glory…”) and I almost lost it, but I somehow barely kept the melody floating and the song ended with people just reading the words silently as I faded the piano away.
music. it fills in all those spaces where language fails.