The song they play at your funeral can have impacts on others for life. My first love killed himself when he was 18. He was 2 and 1/2 years younger than myself and I had not seen him for the prior year but I was devastated. It, on top of everything else, was the first open casket funeral that I had ever been to.
It started a 3 year period of self-destruction for me. I ended up drinking about a fifth a day everyday. I went to work for my father, would not have to pay for rent or food, so all I used my money for was cigarettes and the cheapest vodka one could get. I would go to the bottom bathroom in my parents house and pretty much every night just drink and smoke until I got nice and drunk and I would crash out in front of the TV.
They played a song at his funeral I still cannot listen to without dying on the inside...Bridge Over Troubled Water. There was another song that meant more to me than that…..Veronica by Elvis Costello. It was a popular song on MTV all the time, that I actually liked. The last night I saw him it was on, and my ex was clowning around when it was on, and he put up his face to the front door when my friend Jo pressed her hand hard against the glass, breaking the glass and my ex had to put alcohol pads on his nose and hold paper towel up against it. It sounds grosser than it was, and since we all had some, but not a lot of booze in us, it was more humorous than anything else.
Little did I know that would be the last time I would see him until I got the dreaded phone call on 4-4-91 that he had passed by his own hand.
It is the one song that holds the most memories for me, and the one that I would want played at my funeral.