Funeral Disc For Sale - Who Will Buy?

[seoxeee]

I know everything about this post is weird. Sure, we don't expect to see anyone advertising funeral CDs for sale. I don't mean selling to the immediate family or a few of the members of the extended family. I'm referring to selling to the Public, to people whom the deceased never met. I do not refer to a tiny crowd of admirers. I write about a multitude of people well distributed around the world, among the critics of the deceased, his enemies and of course, his friends.

Having attended quite a few services held in honour of people who died, I have observed certain trends that are pronounced in this part of the world: First is the heavy, wasteful, lavish and mostly extravagant spending of money that was often not made available to the deceased when he was alive. In Nigeria to be precise, we quantify the value of the deceased by how much we are able to spend on their funerals and so we waste money on everything from caskets to food. Some children of deceased people actually take loans to execute funeral ceremonies! Many spend more than they earn in years! The second observation is the hypocritical 'respect' allotted to the dead. People say good things about them and pretend that they were good people even in cases where such people were societal miscreants.

But guess what? This post is a call to YOU to think about your funeral. I do not pray that it comes soon. I must however remind you that it will surely come one day- any day. I write because  Postgrado Técnico de Sonido people will choose to say about you, it won't change who you actually were. And history has a way of remembering things. History remembers Hitler. I definitely remember Lamidi Adedibu, the Basorun Gaa of Ibadan Land. I also remember the Late General Sani Abacha and no number of post humus awards conferred on him will change the image I have of him.

I know I have delivered the conclusion before the story. The inspiration for this post is actually the memorial service held in honour of Michael Jackson. I was shocked to hear that a dead man was having the kind of attention he commanded that day. Viewing it live was an estimated population of between six hundred million and one billion people! That is like saying one of every ten people in the world abandoned his work to watch the service held in honour of a dead man! Thousands of responsible people struggled to get passes to be inside the Stapples Centre. Some others stayed in churches and public places to watch projected images. Apart from Nelson Mandela, I don't know of any other person alive that can command that kind of attention in death.

And that is not counting the number of CDs of the memorial service that have been sold. I'm sure the number has run into millions. In Nigeria alone, I know that the programme DVD has been pirated by about 3 different outfits. You should know what that is saying about sales. For most people I know who have the DVD (including me), it is something that is watched almost every day. Wait a minute. Here am I confessing that I watch a memorial service regularly? It's quite simple. Besides the musical value of that programme, there is something else...

It's a story of a man of influence, a person who has touched lives. A musician who has entertained to limits unattained by anyone before him. It is a story of hard work, of perseverance, of devotion, love, respect and the ultimate desire the make the world better. It is not a story of perfection, in fact it is a story stained with terrible and almost unforgivable deeds like allegations of child molestation and changing from black to white. But even those do not remove the fact that Michael Jackson was a blessing to the world. From his life, I have the following points: