The shiny black vehicle eased up to the starting line and waited. A crowd of spectators rose in expectation. As the staging lights moved through their sequence, the driver raced the motor. When the green starting light glowed, the vehicle took off down the asphalt at the Great Lakes Dragway in Paris, Wisconsin.

Those in attendance cheered the auto as it passed. The time was unimpressive: 45 seconds, 27 miles per hour. The feat was special; a fully loaded hearse had sped down the asphalt carrying one Jerome Miller on his last ride while friends, family, and other drag racing folks, some unaware of what was happening, watched in wonder.

One of the drivers said, “Cool. That was really cool.”

Miller was a long time drag racer, and his family wanted to send him off as a drag racer. The track obliged, and everyone was treated to a funeral for the ages. It wasn’t the first original funeral and won’t be the last. More importantly, Miller’s family was given a respite from the hole his absence will leave in their lives.

According to experts, humans became human when we started recognizing death and wondered when the spirits left the flesh and where they moved to. We began giving the deceased a sendoff to keep them dead and assure their ghosts wouldn’t come back and haunt us, the living. Funerals have evolved from that idea. The modern funeral in nearly every culture is primarily for those left behind.

Today, we combine pagan rituals, religious practices, fear, and personal preference into ceremonies that can be solemn, emotional, or downright strange. There are as many different ways to say goodbye as there are societies. Few things are as strange to us as the burial practices of a different people.

The Woman Whose Garbage I’m Responsible for purchased a really tacky golf bag urn for me a few years back. It was a joke in one sense and somewhere to store my remains until my boys transport me to my desired final resting spot.

She told my mother about the urn before I got around to informing her I planned to be cremated. My devout Southern Baptist mother thought for a moment and then wondered if that might hurt, being burned. I told her as long as they waited until I was for sure dead, it probably wouldn’t hurt at all.

When I was marooned in Eastern Tennessee, I heard of a ceremony where a devout Volunteer fan died ahead of schedule. His family was devastated, and folks worried about how the ceremony might go.

Just before the casket was closed to take him to the cemetery, his widow screamed and bolted for the front of the church, yelling for them not to close the casket lid. As well wishers and family fidgeted with worry, the man’s surviving spouse produced a stick–on sign to attach to the inside of the casket prior to closing.

The sign read Vol Fan on Board.

“Now you can close it,” the widow smiled through shining eyes. He was ready to meet his maker. Eternity will be fine for him unless the Almighty is a Bama fan.