There is nothing like pre-planning your funeral to gain the peace of mind that then allows one to concentrate on other important quality-of-life issues, like eating as many Hostess Ding Dongs as possible between now and the time when …

Well, you know.

Besides, when my time comes — and something tells me that it will — pre-planning will keep my family members from needlessly buying me some incredibly snazzy send-off, simply to assuage their numbing sense of loss and grief.

On the other hand, if their sense of loss and grief is less numbing than I had anticipated, this will also prevent me from ending up as a visual aid down at Skip’s School of the Mortuary Arts.

This is not to say that I have pre-planned my own funeral, however.

After all, being only 59, I figure I have a good 80 or 90 years left, so what’s the rush?

Besides, I can’t escape the feeling that once you walk out that funeral home door, a check mark appears alongside your name on some cosmic order blank marked, “Ready for delivery.”

Then a piano falls on you.

Still, I occasionally find myself in the pre-planning mode, driving past some beautiful little country cemetery and thinking, “Now there’s a nifty spot!”

Then I remember that, unless death is considerably more interesting than I suspect it is, niftiness is liable to be less of a priority for me then than it is now.

That’s when I think, OK. Just bury me with my relatives up in northern Ohio, or my wife’s relatives out in Illinois. But then I think, why? Are we going to be getting together for pinochle games?

Finally, I remember that old self-development mantra, “Bloom where you are planted.” Bury me anywhere convenient and I’ll be as happy as can be, under the circumstances.

After awhile, though, all that seems like lots to worry about, so I switch over to the lighter side of pre-planning funerals — my fantasy memorial service.

I want music by George Jones and the Kinks.

Also, I want my coffin lid hinged by a standard spiral binder, like a professional reporter’s notebook.
As for the ceremony itself, I wish to be carried through the newsroom by ranks of wailing editors, who will line up with their pens drawn to give me the ultimate newspaperman’s tribute — the 21 Bic salute.

Also, I want the minister to sprinkle newspaper terms throughout my eulogy, ending with, “How about that? He finally met a deadline that even he couldn’t miss.”

John Carlson is a features writer for The Star Press.