You will have a small funeral

The idea sounds so sad,

only a few to see you off, the last remnants

of those who knew you at your fullest, their numbers

drained by the swamps of old age, accident,

illness, even violence. Say you live to be

a hundred, as so many will in the age of

nanomedicine and robotic surgery, and having gone

away from northern states' snows, are now in Florida,

or New Mexico, or even Texas,

and there you come to the end. Shipping's

expensive, either for your remains or for those

who would see you buried, so the southern locals will

attend to you, they who knew you for a mere

twenty years or so, and they don't go to many

funerals, since there will be so many to choose from.

Hopefully, the lead pastor will be there, not just her

assistant, out of respect for your cockeyed contributions

to the church, and likely appearing will be

your wife if she's up to it, and the self-proclaimed

fogeys who drank coffee with you on cool mornings.

It will be a sunny day -- that's why you had moved there --

and the temperature will be on its daily rise,

so the service will be brief,

and everybody will go back to the church for

fruit salad and turkey sandwiches. The church will be empty

by two, the mourners counting their blessings and wondering

how many more they'll see before

their own. Yes, you will have a small funeral,

yet it will be larger than the time

they rolled in place the stone of a borrowed tomb,

not knowing then how silly a funeral really is.