Planning My Funeral - Prologue. Prologue

“Hey, Neil.”

“What’s up, Teddy?”

We were riding the gondola up Aspen Mountain. One of the off-and-on times I was living in Chicagoland, I stayed with my cousin up in the north burbs for a while. She and her husband had three sons who were like the little brothers I never had – Greg, John & Teddy. Officially, they are my first cousins, once-removed. Over 20 years later, we’re still close. Greg stayed in the Chicago burbs and has his family there. John and Teddy live in Aspen with their wives and kids. I head out to Aspen once a year to visit. It’s kinda cool to have quiet time with Teddy like this. With the kids demanding attention from their Uncle Neil, it’s sometimes hard to hang out like before.

Teddy married a wonderful girl, Crystal. I’m the godfather to their daughter and their third kid has my name. When they asked me if they could name their second son after me, I hesitated. “Man! You’re putting a lot of pressure on me, ya know! Also kinda restrictive. I mean, I can’t ever be arrested, go to jail, die under suspicious circumstances … I mean, then the kid will be scarred for life having my name.” Teddy and his wife Crystal laughed. What could I ever do wrong? Well, Teddy knew. But what he knew was locked in “the vault.” Crystal really didn’t. I mean she knew I was gay and all. But what if one of my BDSM sessions went awry and a sub I was using ended up dead? That would make the news! In any case, I assented.

How is this important? Well, I’m close to their family. It’s funny. The family members I’m closest to are officially “once-removed.” Ironic. As I said, Teddy and I are close. We talk about a lot of things. “The vault” is our term for something akin to the seal of confession or attorney-client privilege. It’s our thing. Teddy is actually named as executor in my will. He knows all my secrets. In addition, he’s an accountant and he’s good at following instructions. Winning combination. He also worries about providing well enough for his family so he’s always open to interesting investment ideas.

So here we are, in the fiberglass bubble gondola. If there’s a time for private talk, the 15-minute trip is pretty much all we have. I noticed that he gave one of those silent cues married people develop to Crystal to take the kids in another gondola. I’m perceptive like that. I speak body language fluently. So I knew something was up.

“Crystal and I were talking to her Dad.” Crystal’s Dad was a very successful insurance broker back in Indiana. “He was saying a really good investment would be to find someone who we can take out a life insurance policy on.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Like your company … doesn’t your company have a life insurance policy out on you?”

“Yeah ….”

“Crystal’s Dad thinks it would be a good investment if we could do that with someone we know.”

“That’s weird.”

So he went on to explain how they needed someone basically middle-aged, established, a non-smoker and in good health to get the best rates possible. Would I let them insure me naming their kids – my goddaughter, my namesake and their oldest – as the beneficiaries? They would pay all the premiums. So weird.

“What would be involved?”

“Well, talk to Crystal’s Dad. He can tell you. But it’s just some paperwork and a medical exam.”

I’m good with paperwork and I’m a fit, healthy guy. No worries. So I spoke with Crystal’s Dad, he laid everything out. I said fine. When I got back home to San Francisco, some insurance company’s medic-for-hire stopped by the house to weigh me, measure me, do the standard tests and draw some blood. Simple enough.

Now, some of you are thinking, since the title of this story is, “Planning My Funeral,” that the medical tests revealed something sinister. Nope. Everything came out excellent. I was fit and healthy. When I die, Alan, Christine and Neil will be well provided for. At the time, no one could foresee that in just under two years from that gondola ride, Crystal’s Dad’s prediction would prove correct – it would be an excellent investment. But we don’t find out there’s something sinister growing in me until about a year from now.

+ + +

Ten months later …

“So I had this dream.”

“Yeah?” Nat had a way about sounding disinterested about anything. He was a Millennial and an Ivy League grad who migrated to San Francisco to work in the tech industry. He was a cute twink whose Grindr profile linked to Instagram. I checked out his IG and he had a cheeky byline: “Software Engineer by day and organist by night.” Among his pics was one of a church taken from the organ loft. I knew the church. It was close by.

I’m Catholic. Yeah, a gay Catholic. They exist. Among the seven degrees I have is one in Moral Theology. So don’t go all Leviticus on me because I’d dance circles around you making you feel like an idiot for not knowing anything about your faith. In any case, I’m pretty well off, contribute to worthwhile charities and what not, including my church. I sit on the Finance Council of my parish and I’m kind of influential … mainly because if the parish wants to do something special, they always hit me up. So, they have to stay on my good side.

I’m a traditional sorta guy … I like organ music. When I was at Notre Dame I sang with the Liturgical Choir. The 10AM Mass at Sacred Heart Basilica used to be called, “Yells, Bells & Smells.” I was a 2^nd Bass … a rich, bourbon whiskey sorta deep voice. I just have a generally nice speaking voice. People who don’t know me, when hearing me, say, “You have a radio voice!” Funny. They probably didn’t even know that they’ve heard my voice on the airwaves before during campaign seasons. It’s a voice that served me well during BDSM sessions, too … where I would test a sub’s limits and when it was close to breaking, I would tell it, “Listen to the sound of my voice … I will talk you through this.” So they would listen, and, as if in some sort of hypnotic state, they would transcend whatever pain or discomfort they were feeling, and go farther than they thought they could go.

I learned this when taking one of my theology classes. When martyrs were facing death at the stake or about to be chewed up by lions, they could project themselves from their bodies and feel no pain. I was teaching subs how to do this.

I have the ability to put people at ease. I’m a reassuring presence. People, even strangers, trust me quickly. The way I make eye contact, express empathy, manage my body language and the comforting sound of my voice all project an endearing presence. So when I say that I think we should bring on an organist (rather than just the pianist and guitar players we have), people readily agree.

One night, I come across Nat. I message him on IG asking if he plays the organ. He says that he does. I ask him if he’s open to playing at other churches. He is. I go and check him out. Talented. So I invited him to play with us and he accepted. We became friends.

“So I had this dream.”

“Yeah?”

“Freaky actually. I was in the choir loft looking down at the church and you were playing Faure’s Requiem … the first piece … the Requiem Aeternam. The church was filled, and all the old priests I knew at the church – a few of them now dead – were around the altar as a coffin was carried up the aisle. And it had on it the traditional black pall with a silver brocade – not the white one they use now. And I thought, it’s nice they’re going back to the traditional way. And I saw a lot of people I knew and wondered why they were here ... did someone I know die? Then you looked at me and you said, ‘It’s your funeral.’ Freaky.”

“Oh wow.”

“I better leave a song list for you for my funeral. Might be sooner than we think!” We laughed.

“I hope not!” Then we proceeded on to an inane discussion about how Prince didn’t even leave a will.

I know that dreams aren’t literal. Well, for most people. Pedantic psycho-babblers would say that dreaming about your funeral has some other subconscious meaning – like that you’re deeply burying emotions you have rather than dealing with them. On one level, that could be true. I do compartmentalize things I’m feeling that I don’t think would be productive to my task at hand. Sometimes, those things get parking-lotted for quite some time. But I also know that my dreams process actual things that are going on.

I have the ability to engage in directed dreaming. When I was in high school, I could say to myself, “Dream about fucking Danny in the bathroom.” And I’d dream about going into the restroom at school, seeing Danny taking a leak, going over to him, pulling down his pants and fucking him. So real. Or I could dream that I’m falling and say to myself in the dream, “It’s a dream. Fly.” And I would fly. Or I could think about a problem that I was having and, in a process-oriented fashion, work through the problem and have a solution in the morning. I remember one time when I was down in Australia, I lost my ATM card. Until I got a replacement, I pulled out another ATM card to an account I rarely used. I couldn’t remember the PIN. So I said to myself, “Figure out what the PIN is.” I went to sleep, watched myself inserting the card into the machine and punching in the PIN. I woke up … it couldn’t be that simple. I take the card, put it into the ATM, punch in the number, and sure enough! Yeah. So my dreams are special.

Thus it was … before I even knew that something was wrong with me, my subconscious was telling me that I should start planning my funeral.