I’m not so sure any of us humans merit such extravagance. I’m definitely not going the embalming, wake, casket, burial plot, tombstone route. I, myself, had never heard of that option and was planning on cremation.

What could be simpler? He was about to email his family to tell him, so they’d know. You, and the important people around you ought to know what you want done, don’t you agree?Ī friend told me yesterday that he wanted to be buried in the earth when he dies: wrapped in a blanket and laid in a hole in the ground. It’s just like having a living will, or advance directives in place just in case something else might happen leading up to your actual dying. That prayer gives specific orders to the Lord that He/She/It has been given soul/sole guardianship. What do I know? There might be 1000 options out there for what happens to my soul if it chooses to leave my body during the night.

The beauty of that childhood prayer is that it ensured that my soul would get into the right hands, lest something go awry during the night. Last night, for the first time in decades, that childhood prayer came to my mind as I lay my head on my pillow - thankful for that pillow, for my bed, my weighted comforter, that I lived indoors, that I was healthy, that I’d eaten well that day, that I had friends and family to care about and who care about me - all of the seemingly-basic commodities that too many people lack nowadays. Paul’s United Church of Christ for Sunday School, patent-leather purse in hand, church envelope securely gluing my quarter inside, and my requisite, white-cotton handkerchief with pink embroidered flowers on the border lining the bottom of my purse. No, every Sunday, I gleefully walked to St. I was afraid of running out of sweets and potato chips (which, thankfully, never happened). Few children know what “dying” actually means. “Jesus Christ, what a morbid prayer to teach to kids!” When I got old enough to ponder its meaning, I became slightly incensed. I recited it every, single night at bedtime throughout all the years of my childhood. I was taught this prayer by my mother at a very young age - maybe five, I don’t remember.

If i die before i wake dear canada