I Attended My Own Funeral

To the world, Thomas Miller was a pillar of the community, a loving husband and father who tragically drowned in a boating accident. A good man, gone too soon.

But Thomas Miller isn't dead. He’s sitting in the back pew of the church, wearing a cheap suit and sunglasses, watching his own funeral. He is a ghost of his own making, a man who meticulously planned his own death to escape a life that was suffocating him.

He thought he was escaping his debts, his failing business, and a quiet, lonely marriage. He thought he was choosing freedom. But as he listens to the eulogies from his friends, his business partner, and his wife, and sees the look on his daughter’s face, he makes a devastating discovery.

This is the confession of a man who killed his own identity, only to find out what he truly lost. He escaped his life, but he can't escape himself.


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The tea tastes better here. It's the water. I think,
hard water full of minerals, leaves a bit of a
film on the top. Back home, we had a water softener.
My wife, Sarah, insisted on it, said it was better
for her skin. Everything was soft there, the water, the carpets,
the life. I was living a soft, comfortable, suffocating cage.

(00:23):
My name is Thomas, or it was now it's well,
it's whatever I write on the form at the temp agency.
Last week I was a Peter. This week I'm a Michael.
It doesn't really matter. The only name that ever felt
real was Thomas Miller. And Thomas Miller is dead, drowned
in a boating accident on Lake Champlain three months ago. Tragic,

(00:44):
a real shame. He was a good man, they said,
a pillar of the community, a loving husband and father.
He had so much to live for. He also had
two hundred thousand dollars in credit card debt, a business
that was circling the drain, and a soul so worn
down it was practically transparent. The plan was surprisingly simple.
It's amazing what you can learn from internet forums and

(01:07):
old spy novels. A second identity slowly built over years,
a driver's license from a different state, a small bank
account fed with cash from side jobs Sarah never knew about.
And the boat. Abought the old fishing boat for a song,
spent a year fixing it up. Sarah thought it was
my mid life crisis, my little hobby. It wasn't a hobby.

(01:28):
It was my escape patch. The day I died was
a perfect Tuesday, clear skies, a light chop on the water.
I told Sarah I was going fishing. I kissed her
good bye. She was on the phone, distracted planning a
dinner party. She just waved. I remember that, the wave,
not even looking up out on the lake. I did
what I had to do. I radioed a fake distress call,

(01:51):
my voice pitched with panic, engine trouble taking on water.
Then I put on the survival suit, grabbed the waterproof
duffel bag with my new life inside, and tipped the boat.
The cold of the lake was a shock. It felt
like being baptized. I swam for the far shore, the
Canadian side a mile away. It was the hardest thing

(02:11):
I've ever done. Every muscle screamed. I thought about just
letting go, it would have been so easy. But then
I thought about the spreadsheets, the disappointed clients, the look
in Sarah's eyes when the third credit card was declined,
and I kept swimming. I made it. I ditched the
survival suit in the woods, changed into the clothes of Peter,

(02:31):
and walked to a bus station. By the time the
coast guard found the empty, overturned boat, I was already
in another country, another life. The hardest part was the waiting.
For two weeks, I lived in a cheap motel, watching
the news on a flickering TV, waiting for them to
find my body. But the lake is deep, the currents

(02:51):
are strange. They never did. After two weeks of searching,
they gave up. Thomas Miller was declared lost at sea,
presumed dead. And then came the funeral. I had to go.
I know it's insane, pathological, maybe, but I had to
see it. I had to know if the life I'd
left behind was worth mourning. I took a bus back
across the border. I bought a cheap dark suit from

(03:14):
a thrift store, a pair of sunglasses, and a hat.
I sat in the very last pew of Saint Jude's,
the church where Sarah and I were married. It was
a full house, standing room only. My business partner was
there looking devastated, my friends from the golf club, my neighbors,
and in the front row, my wife Sarah and my
daughter Chloe. Sarah was a perfect widow, strong, stoic, dabbing

(03:40):
her eyes with a lace handkerchief. She looked beautiful. She
always looked beautiful in black. My business partner, Gregg, gave
the first eulogy. He talked about my integrity, my work ethic.
He conveniently left out the part about him cooking the
books and leaving me to hold the bag. He cried
real tears, crocodile tears. My best friend Mark told a

(04:01):
story about a fishing trip we took. He made me
sound like some kind of folk hero, brave, funny, larger
than life. He was a good friend. I felt a
pang of guilt for that one. And then Sarah spoke.
She walked to the podium so poised. She talked about
our life together, the house we built, the daughter we raised.

(04:21):
She painted a picture of a perfect marriage, a romance
for the ages. She didn't mention the silences, the separate bedrooms,
the feeling of being too polite, friendly strangers sharing a mortgage.
But it was Chloe, my daughter, that broke me. She
was sixteen. She refused to speak. She just sat there,
staring at the empty coffin at the front of the church,

(04:43):
her face a stone mask of rage. She wasn't mourning
a dead father. She was hating a man who had
abandoned her. And she was right. I hadn't just faked
my death. I had committed a murder. I had murdered
her father. I sat there in the back of the church,
a ghost at my own funeral, and I realized the truth.
I hadn't escaped a cage. I had just built a

(05:04):
new one, a smaller, lonelier one with walls made of lies.
The man they were eulogizing, Thomas Miller, he wasn't me.
He was a character. We had all invented, a fictional
man who was good and kind and loved. And that
man was dead. I had killed him. I slipped out
before the end. I couldn't watch them carry the empty

(05:24):
box out into the sunshine. So now I drink my
tea with the hard water. I work jobs that require
no memory and no future. I am a ghost. I
have no past, no family, no name that belongs to me.
I am free, utterly, completely and miserably free. And some nights,
when the silence in this little apartment gets too loud,

(05:45):
I remember the look on my daughter's face, and I
wonder if it's too late to be resurrected.