They say there are only two things that are guaranteed in life... death, and taxes. Today is April 15th and if you live in the US and you aren't a billionaire, a kid, or an illegal immigrant, that means your taxes are due today. I had my taxes done quite some time ago, but despite that, those two constants still hit pretty close to home today.
After putting in a morning of work, @mrsbozz and I are taking the rest of the day off to go to the funeral of my grandfather. It's actually not going to be a proper funeral, he passed away a week or two ago and since they lived down in Georgia, they needed to fly the body up to Michigan for the ceremony. I've been told it's going to be relatively short (not that it matters to me), but it definitely has me contemplating some things.
In fact, I was awake at 1:30 AM last night for quite some time going through a lot of thoughts about life, the universe, and everything else. Some of them were quite dark and I did my best to follow the advice of @dbooster where I acknowledge the thoughts, but then let them move along. I think I got maybe an hour of sleep before I had to get up at 4:30 AM. I'm still a work in progress...
The one benefit I got from all that late night thinking, was it gave me the inspiration for this post. Besides the fact that it is the 15th of April, it is also Tuesday, and that means it's time for a #threetunetuesday post sponsored by @ablaze.
In case you haven't guessed it, the theme for today is death and taxes. Pretty fitting right? I've got some good ones for you today, so I hope you are ready!
If you asked someone what the most played song at a funeral was, they would probably tell you it was something like Amazing Grace. That's what I would have guessed until I discovered this little tidbit of information quite some time ago. It turns out the most played song at funerals is actually "My Way" by Frank Sinatra. I don't know if that is still accurate today, but at one point in time it was (according to the Internet). In fact, I remember when I first started working in the small town where I do, the head of the local funeral home reached out to me because he needed a copy of "My Way" and he figured me being a tech guy I could get my hands on it somehow.
I did...
For me, there is a different classic that I would probably have played at my funeral when the occasion arises. It would be some version of "I'll Be Seeing You". I picked the Billie Holiday version for this post because it is so iconic, but really any version will do. Despite my love of this style of music, this song only came on my radar thanks to the show Star Trek Deep Space Nine. There was an episode where this song played quite a prominent role for several residents of the space station, and I will always remember it because of that.
If you ever get the chance to go see Jason Isbell live, you should totally do that. If you are lucky, he will sing the song "If We Were Vampires". It's one of my favorites of his and it is deeply moving and meaningful if you really listen to the lyrics. It also fits really well with the theme this week.
I honestly haven't put a ton of thought into it, but it is very possible this is another song that I would likely have played at my funeral one day. It would mostly be for my wife, but still, it's a good song and everyone else can just suffer along if they don't like it.
"Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone"
That's the line that really gets me. It's just a really well written song. If you need a little something to pick you up after listening to this song, I've got just what you need...
Many years ago my sister got married and the guy that she got married to has a sister of his own. Are you following me so far? Now, my brother in law's sister married a guy who just happened to be in a band called the LP Outsiders. So, given the fact that this post isn't just about death, it is also about taxes, I felt like "Lint In My Pockets" would be a perfect song to close things out.
The band isn't together anymore, but my brother in law's brother in law is still making music and at one point he was even one of the potential nominees for a Grammy. This song was actually also included in the soundtrack for the movie Three To Tango starring the late Matthew Perry, Neve Campbell, and Dylan McDermott.
Anyway, it's kind of sad that the LP Outsiders didn't stay together, they had a really cool sound, but those things happen I guess.
Hopefully this tax season doesn't leave you with just lint in your pockets, or the other alternative I talked about here today...
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