Social distancing. Mandatory masks. The vaccine arms race. These are some of the new realities brought forth by Covid.  Another is the online funeral. Recently, I attended my first. I logged on early, eyes closed in quiet contemplation, and for the next twenty minutes, touching songs by Cohen, Sinatra, and Groban, accompanied me while I waited for the service to start. If you’ve ever sat like this, you’ve experienced how the mind drifts, and at some point, my thoughts went to the funerals of the future, and before long I concluded something with such certainty and wondered how a brilliant mind like Gene Roddenberry didn’t. The conclusion? Read on.

In the 1982 movie – Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Mr. Spock’s funeral is officiated by his best friend, Captain Kirk, who looks tired and forlorn, and through quivering lips, delivers a heartbreaking eulogy. A few dozen attendees stare back in rapt attention, standing in silence to honor and remember their hero and his sacrifice. Finally, Spock, who’s coffin is really a torpedo, is shot into space as the bag-pipes play Amazing Grace.

Almost 40 years later, something dawns on me. Where’s his surviving family? Honorable dignitaries? College chums? Wouldn’t they want to pay their respect? But they’re not Kirk’s ship. They’re either traversing space, on their home planets or visiting another. Understandably, getting to the USS Enterprise is much harder than taking a cross-town Uber. Travelling from your planet to another solar system would surely be cost prohibitive, and if not, very time consuming. But, wait. There’s something cheap and fast, that can be broadcast wherever you may be. A video streaming signal.

As humans reach into space, the distances between Earth, it’s colonies and it’s space-faring vessels, will be so vast, that online funerals will not only be a convenience, but a necessity. Throw in technologies like virtual reality or holographic imaging, and it’ll be just like being there.

Rodedenberry once said, “It isn’t all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.” And as our adventure unfolds into the deepest reaches of space, the power of invention will ensure that our important rites and rituals, like the funeral, will remain with us. But while I love them, I’m not sure about the bag-pipes. 😊

Live long and prosper.

BG