Lance Watson's blog

Will you smoke weed at my funeral
or will you pretend this is a serious occasion?

I’m not asking for much.
Just a little skunky acknowledgment
that I lived the way I lived—
half earnest, half checked out,
always suspicious of authority,
including my own.

I picture the room:
bad carpet, folding chairs,
a podium that wobbles if you lean on it,
someone mispronouncing my name
like they didn’t really know me
but felt obligated to show up anyway.

There’s a slideshow.
There’s always a slideshow.
Photos where I’m younger than I ever felt,
smiling in ways that didn’t last,
wearing clothes I thought meant something.

And you—
you’re in the back, of course,
because you hate rituals
unless they involve music or substances.

You lean over and whisper,
“He would’ve hated this,”
which is true,
but not useful.

I want one of you—
just one—
to step outside,
cup your hands against the wind,
light up something decent,
not that desperate end-of-the-bag dust.

Take a pull
and think of all the conversations
we never finished
because we got distracted
or tired
or convinced we had time.

Think of the afternoons
that evaporated
into nothing worth explaining.

The jobs I quit in my head
long before I quit them on paper.
The loves that stalled
somewhere between promise and relief.

In the eulogy they’ll say
I was thoughtful.
They’ll say I cared deeply.
They’ll say I was searching.

They will not say
I was confused most of the time
and making it up
with alarming confidence.

They will not say
I wanted peace
but kept mistaking it for escape.

That’s where the weed comes in.

Not as rebellion.
Not as nostalgia.
As accuracy.

I don’t want prayers
that sound like apologies.
I don’t want heaven
described as customer service.

I want you slightly altered,
just enough to feel
the strange tenderness of existence—
how absurd it is
that I was here at all,
that you are still here,
that the world didn’t pause
out of courtesy.

Someone will cry
because that’s what you do
when the body makes demands.

Someone will check their phone
because grief has a short attention span.

Someone will think,
“I should’ve called more,”
and then won’t change anything.

Outside, the day will continue
with criminal indifference.
Cars. Birds. A guy yelling into a headset
about quarterly projections.

That’s when I want the smoke
to rise—
thin, unofficial,
unapproved by any institution.

A small signal
that says:

Yes, this mattered.
No, we can’t explain why.
Yes, it’s already gone.

If you’re worried it’s disrespectful,
don’t be.
I respected very few things
and none of them were solemn.

Just don’t make a big deal of it.
No speeches.
No declarations.

Inhale.
Exhale.
Stand there quietly
and let the moment remain
slightly out of focus.

That blur—
that soft refusal to conclude—
that’s me.

That’s how I lived.

That’s how I’d like to be remembered.