Dylan Stafford

Now I know how I want to die.

Obviously painlessly–and in my sleep at the age of 112–but more importantly, when I die I want people to be laughing at my funeral. I want to watch from the great beyond, and listen to the sounds of giggles and laughter as family and friends come together at my memorial. I haven’t thought too much about my own demise, but last Saturday, I attended a funeral that not only got me thinking, it got me excited–I’ve always loved planning parties.

Saturday was my first sober funeral. Most funerals are somber, but this one was sober, and taking the “m” out of somber creates a different animal entirely. This was a celebration of the life of a friend I made in the rooms of recovery, Joseph*, and the service was a delicious mixture of love, laughter and respect, with just the right dash of irreverence. 

Marisa and I got up early Saturday to get a the jump on the morning. We had a trifecta of activities–a birthday party, a funeral and work–and we needed to be out of the house by 9:20 a.m. with our son Jackson dressed, fed and ready to go. We live in Culver City, on the westside of Los Angeles, and the birthday party was at a kid’s room over the hill in “the Valley”, in Sherman Oaks.

Jackson is almost-three-years old and he doesn’t like to get dressed anymore. He’s figured out that when the pajamas come off, daytime clothes go on and it’s time to leave the house and face the big, bad world. Our precious little angel is fully into the “No” and “I don’t want to” stage, and getting him dressed has gone from quality time together to being a multi-room, high-speed chase with a wrestling match at the end.

Since I would not have time to change clothes between the birthday party and the funeral, I dressed in my dark suit with a conservative tie. I had to be even more persuasive with Jackson to get him dressed, as I couldn’t wrestle his wiggly body like normal.

“Jackson, we’re going to go to a party,” I said in my high-pitched, this-will-be-fun voice. “It’s Elena’s birthday. All your friends are going to be there. There’s going to be cake!”

“No. I don’t wanna goooooo.” He stood there looking at me with his wrinkled nose.

“Jackson, you can’t go to the party wearing your nighttime clothes.”

It was 9:00 already. He’d been awake an hour and his nighttime diaper was hanging between his legs, looking like a water balloon about to burst.

“I don’t want to wear my daytime clothes. I want to go like this.”

Just under three years old, his sentences are coming out coherent and determined. He may or may not ever be athletic, but he’s gotten verbosity and stubbornness from both of his loving parents.

We continued this debate from room to room as I berated myself in my head for putting on my fancy clothes before I got him dressed. This could have all been done faster if I’d just turned getting dressed into a game of “tickle monster,” I thought. 

Jackson finally relented and I got him ready at about the same time Marisa finished her hair. We loaded into two cars, since Marisa and Jackson would remain at the party while I went to the funeral and then to work. I checked that we had the address and we headed to the valley.

Los Angeles has gotten a lot of rain this winter and from the overpass of the 10 curving into the 405 I could see the distant mountain peaks in the back range covered with snow–these beautiful mountains are on LA postcards, but in regular life we see them rarely. Only on calm weekends, or after lots of rain, are they visible. It makes them that much more striking because of their infrequent sightings. They’ve been there all along? I always find myself thinking.

In the car, Jackson and I were playing a game where we whispered everything. Between the front seat and back seat we whispered at each other a disjointed game of “I spy.” Marisa followed in her car behind us.

Traffic was light, the view was fantastic and for 20 minutes I could almost imagine that it was worth the crazy cost of living to live here in Los Angeles. We crested the Sepulveda pass and the valley spread out before us, itself magnificent with its own back ranges of mountains similarly shining with snow.

We exited Ventura Boulevard and found the double-decker strip mall and the birthday party. We were only about 10 minutes late and some of Jackson’s buddies from school were already arrived, plus the birthday girl herself, Elena.

We shook hands all around and met some parents we didn’t know. Elena’s grandparents were present and I met them for the first time. The kids were going ape-crazy already as the room was decked out with toys. The bouncy room was blown up and waiting, the rock wall already had a spider-child climbing it. One of Jackson’s friend’s older brothers scampered up and rang the red bell at the top.

Almost as soon as I’d arrived, it was time for me to leave. I made my apologies to Elena’s mom and dad, kissed Marisa and explained to Jackson that “Daddy has to go to a meeting.” Jackson was rolling around in a tub of those plastic balls with three other friends and he barely noticed me go.

Jumping back in my car to return to Santa Monica for the funeral, the traffic had already started to slow–just an hour later but in LA an hour makes such a difference. The funeral was scheduled to start at 11:00 a.m., and it soon became clear I would be late. Damn it. I hate being late. This is the first funeral I’ve attended for a fellow sober person, and I really had the intention of making everything fit.

One of the many lessons I’ve learned in sobriety is the difference between my intentions and my actions. When I drank, I always had good intentions, but my actions usually fell short. I’ve learned slowly that nobody cares about my intentions; it’s my actions that get measured. My intention had been that everything was going to fit time-wise, but I was going to be late.

I found a metered street spot on Wilshire, plugged in quarters and jumped out to go find the church. Only a few blocks away, the Pacific shimmered in the distance. Again, the fleeting thought crossed my mind that maybe the beauty of the ocean is worth all the hassles of living is such a big city.

4^th and Wilshire was all I had for an address and standing by the parking meter I could see no church, only office buildings and shops. A flamboyant homeless woman was ahead of me and I thought about asking her for directions. She looked like “Girls just want to have fun” Cindy Lauper, with bright neon accents and ribbons bedecking her body. Santa Monica has homeless people everywhere; a progressive city offers support to many.

My potential helper floated off in another direction, and as I stood at the corner I remembered where the church was. I crossed with the light and found it, nestled in between a Thai food restaurant and a parking garage. I slipped in the back, only 15 minutes late, and took a seat in the outer lobby, the “crying section”, next to another friend from the rooms of recovery.

The minister was giving his sermon and we listened to his voice through a speaker in the ceiling. I’d missed the opening hymns, but that was all.

The bulletin was 10 pages total, including the back page with a photo of our friend Joseph tandem sky-diving. Most pages were filled with hymns and prayers. Directly after the minister’s sermon there was one word, Remembrances, and this was what was coming up next.

The first speaker came to the microphone.

“Good morning my name is Bill Jones*. I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to do this. My name is Bill and I’m an alcoholic.” There was a ripple of laughter of recognition through the room.

Recovery and 12 Step programs have a tradition of anonymity; Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

The tradition dates back to the 30s and 40s, to the lessons the founders learned about what it takes to make sobriety safe and available to the newcomer. There has to be enough safety for people to walk through the doors of recovery, and anonymity helps provide that safety. The tradition is powerful and we respect it, but at a funeral for someone who was in recovery it is kind of impossible not to “let the cat out of the bag.”

The first eulogy was loving and the laughter flowed freely. Second and third was a family member and then another friend, followed by the fourth and final tribute.

The last eulogist was also a friend from recovery and he spoke to how Joseph had utilized the 12 Step program to deal with a terminal case of cancer. In the last year, Joseph had learned that his time was coming down to days or weeks and his body was weakening rapidly. In much pain, he still welcomed a parade of visitors through his hospital room in his last weeks.

Joseph had been a successful man and even in his hospital days, he continued to carry out his affairs. On a conference call from his hospital room, his chemo bag had drained its toxic cocktail fully through the IV and then emitted a beeping noise designed to tell the nurses it was empty.

“What’s that beeping noise?” came a question from someone on the conference call who didn’t realize where Joseph was.

“Oh, I think that is a truck backing up in the alley,” said Joseph. His situation was what it was. He wasn’t looking for sympathy.

Joseph dealt with death and pain with grace and dignity. Only a month ago, I had heard him sharing in meetings and he had always had a lighthearted, yet heartfelt appreciation for the gifts of sobriety. I only knew him from meetings and I had no idea how ill his body was. After his death, I heard people in meetings give examples of lessons he had gratefully “paid forward” to them.

The favorite quote he gifted my life with was, “I’m just one thought away from having a great life.” I heard him say it two or three times the last year and it always made me chuckle, and I always benefitted from it days after the meeting, when, wrapped around the axle by some annoyance, it would float across my mind, “Dylan, you’re just one thought away from having a great life.”

The funeral had tears–death takes a physical body away and its warmth shines on us no more. But the funeral had more laughter than tears.

Laughter is a gift that grows as you use it. Laughter is contagious. It spreads through people, even from beyond the grave. In sobriety we talk about one day at a time, about being here now, in the present. The future hasn’t happened and the past is past; all we have is now and it is a gift and that’s why we call it the present. A corollary quote I love is One foot in the past and one foot in the future means you’re in a perfect position to piss all over the present.

Joseph, dealing with cancer taking his body, didn’t have time to live in the past or the future. His every day was precious. He brought laughter and shared the gift of sobriety to the end.

I hope I make it to 112 and that I die in my sleep. But no matter how many years or days I have left, I want to go out laughing. Thank you Joseph for your dignity and your example–thank you for how you lived your life. Thank you for showing me how beautiful life can be, all the way to the end.

*Not their real names.