TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I have sort of an odd confession: I have a funeral playlist—a list of songs I want played at whatever my memorial service turns out to be. Occasionally I add to it, and now and then I remove songs once they’ve lost their shine. My kids have laughed about this—“Mom, you’re so dark”—but I don’t find it morbid at all, really. I think of my funeral as the last party I’ll ever throw, and I’ll be there—in spirit, at least. (How’s that for a mom joke?)

I spent a lot of time choosing the music for my wedding years ago—songs to play as guests arrived, songs for the cocktail hour, songs for the reception. Why wouldn’t I put as much thought into my funeral? Music is incredibly important to me, and all of my most important memories come with a soundtrack: the Cure tapes I obsessively listened to in middle school, the Pixies and Liz Phair I played on repeat in high school, the Neko Case records I discovered in college and graduate school, and all of the music that’s become part of my personal archive since.

Music is like a time capsule, isn’t it? Listening to a song transports you right back to a time and place. And sometimes, to a person.

I hope everyone at my funeral agrees that the playlist is excellent, and very “me.” I hope people tell stories, anchored by those songs, and that there is as much laughter as tears. I hope people drink and eat and sing along—with “Can’t Hardly Wait” by The Replacements, and “This Must Be the Place” by the Talking Heads, and “Blonde on Blonde” by Nada Surf. Most of all, I hope everyone there knows how much I loved being here on earth with them. How I would have loved to have stayed. How I hope, though I can’t say I believe it, that we’ll be together again.

The speaker of today’s poem imagines loved ones coming to their funeral—and they have some directives, and some requests. This is a poem I love to share, and one I return to again and again.

Gloria Mundi
by Michael Kleber-Diggs

Come to my funeral dressed as you
would for an autumn walk in the woods.

Arrive on your schedule; I give you permission
to be late, even without good cause.

If my day arrives when you had other plans, please
proceed with them instead. Celebrate me

there — keep dancing. Tend your gardens. Live
well. Don’t stop. Think of me forever assigned

to a period, a place, a people. Remember me
in stories — not the first time we met, not the last,

a time in between. Our moment here is small.
I am too — a worldly thing among worldly things — 

one part per seven billion. Make me smaller still.
Repurpose my body. Mix me with soil and seed,

compost for a sapling. Make my remains useful,
wondrous. Let me bloom and recede, grow

and decay, let me be lovely yet
temporal, like memories, like mahogany.

"Gloria Mundi" by Michael Kleber-Diggs from WORLDLY THINGS © 2024 Michael Kleber-Diggs. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Milkweed Editions.