I once heard of a family here in Arcadia. They were quite well to do, not from the Slums, and they had been sold this idea. I can’t remember how it came to pass, but we were sat, one night, eating a meal, and they told me about the payment scheme they’d signed up to.
They paid in so many credits per month, and the credits were put to one side to pay for their funeral when they died. They looked so happy when they told me about it, but I just couldn’t understand it.
‘Well, we wouldn’t want the burden to fall on our kids, at such a hard time in their life’ the man told me.
‘And we have the credits here and now, so why not prepare. Death is so unexpected, the least we can do is take the sting out of it’ the woman followed up.
I nodded, and finished the meal and went to bed. The family were nice enough to let me stay over on my way through the level, so I didn’t want to offend them.
But that was a load of bullshit.
Death is unexpected. That’s the only part of their reasoning that was truthful and made any kind of sense. Death is the most unexpected thing in this world. It can come at any time, in any place, and from any reason. And even when you’re given an expiry date, like when a doctor tells you you’ve got 6 months left to live because cancer is ravaging your liver – you could just as easily die in a freak drowning the next day.
Death is never certain. But putting credits to one side now to take the sting out doesn’t actually do fuck all.
All that means is someone else has your credits. It doesn’t mean they’ll save them, it doesn’t mean they’ll keep them safe, and it sure doesn’t mean they’ll spend them on the funeral they promised you.
Your kids, who are already grieving for your timely or untimely demise, now have a case of fraud to deal with on top of everything else, and no money to bury you or to hire a lawyer.
So now the burden on your kids is twice as heavy, and the hard time you wanted to ease is twice as hard.
And all because you wanted to plan for death. You can’t plan for death. None of us can. You can’t plan when or how. You can’t plan where or why. You certainly can’t plan how to pay for it. And some of us can’t plan on it happening at all.
All you can plan on is that when your time comes, Tombstone will ferry you across the way, taking you on your last journey.
Tombstone is the only constant, and he don’t give two shits about your saved up credits.
So I told that family before I left to live their life how they wanted to live it, and if they really wanted a funeral, just leave the credits to the kids. Fuck planning for death. Plan for living.
That’s what I do.