Blowing his own horns

A thorough Internet search reveals that no funeral companies in the region offer Viking funerals. So now we’ve got ourselves a problem.

All told, my father hasn’t asked for too much from his kids over the years. He wants a card on Father’s Day. If you cook dinner for him, he’d like a side of creamed spinach. No big deal. 

But upon his death, he’ll be high maintenance.

Old age now has him surrounded, so we now turn to his wishes regarding his mortal remains. He speaks of his desire to have his body placed on a wooden raft and set out to sea from his favorite beach in Scituate, Mass. Once set adrift, he wants an archer on the beach to shoot flaming arrows onto the raft with the intention of setting the raft ablaze and cremating his body. We were hoping he was kidding. He's not. He put his wishes into writing.

So many things are wrong with this. Logistically, legally, psychologically. It’s hard to know where to begin.

A staid, 9 to 5 salesman his adult life, he’s gotten flamboyant in his later years, checking off item by item on his “bucket list.” Having never once shown any inclination to do anything artistic, he suddenly took up watercolors a few years back. In the beginning stages, his lighthouses looked like dildos under attack by an aggressive sunset. Now two of his lighthouses have hung on the walls at the local bank. He's a good painter.

He ran with the bulls in Pamplona in 2009. Not only did he not get killed, but a photographer captured him (we think it was him), panic-stricken, running for his life down the narrow, crowded streets of Spain chased by three sets of sharp horns. The photograph was posted with an AP story on Google News. (If that wasn't him, it certainly looked like him. He says it was him.)

But his bucket list also includes living independently for another 20 years to the ripe old age of 93. This is highly unlikely, and he now knows it. The Viking funeral was to be the denouement to a hard-charging, late-life embrace of danger and personal heroics — actions that would earn him victory marches through the marble arch of family legend. However, the Viking funeral is no longer the denouement; it’s now part of the list, just above skydiving.

He has requested that before the raft is set out to sea we triple-check to see if he has a pulse. He has also requested that the arrow not pierce his body. He has repeated these two conditions as if they are the only hindrances to an otherwise mundane undertaking.

Of his four children, the oldest has declared himself a conscientious objector. That has left the three of us with the burden of either somehow pulling this off or building a strong enough case against it so as to bed down, guilt-free, on the evening following the funeral, grieving the loss of a parent the way normal people grieve — that is to say, without fear that the authorities will come banging on the door.

Maybe we'll assign my sister Jen to be in charge of logistics. Namely, tidal charts, raft construction and archer procurement. (So far, the logistics are not looking good.) My brother Jim will handle permitting and, consequently, the many laws that surely will be broken if we attempt to pull this off (I count no less than five separate government agencies that would find reason to arrest us.)

I’ll handle historical research and the science of cremation. (My research thus far cannot be contained within the kindly confines of parentheses, so I’ll meet you on the other side of this closing, curved enclosure.)

First: Vikings were jerks.

Far more innocent people have been impaled by their stupid horned helmets than all the double-dealing, Pamplonian imbeciles to have ever dodged a bull’s horn.

Secondly: Vikings were typically interred in the ground, not at sea, and when they were interred at sea, an innocent girl was brought aboard to join the deceased in the journey to the realm of the dead. (My father has his faults, but he's basically a gentleman.)

Vikings were seafaring. The closest my father comes to seafaring is that he paints lighthouses.

Furthermore, cremation requires temperatures of between 1,400-2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and can take 90 minutes to two hours. Unless the raft is made of steel and loaded down with a few dozen pallets, I only imagine my father’s charred body eventually washing ashore, which would leave his progeny in a predicament. 

We do like the romance of it all, and no final decision has been made. But probably the most deciding factor is that he has set aside a mere $10,000 for his funeral, which will surely leave us with a huge debt. No money left even to buy a keg for an Irish wake. 

Chucking his body from a plane and having it parachute into the sea would be a cleaner, more fiscally responsible operation, plus another bucket list item to check off. I'm just saying.