A 96-year-old walked into her own funeral to applause

Most of us get our best reviews when we can no longer read them. The kind words wait for the funeral, said to a room the person has already left. On Tuesday, November 3, a family in Goyang, South Korea, got the order right. About 60 relatives and neighbors filled a cafe for the living funeral of Shin Yeong-ju, who was born in 1929. There was no memorial portrait. She walked in on her son's arm, and the mourners broke into applause.

Her youngest son, Kim Su-dong, 64, got the idea when his mother asked him, "What if I end up living until 100 at this rate?" He took it to mean her time might be close. He wanted her to thank the people she loved, and say sorry where she needed to, while she was still alive. Shin was less keen. "I'm not good with words, and honestly wished that we didn't go through with it," she said. A living funeral on one of her favorite TV dramas brought her round.

They called it the Annyeong Party. Annyeong is what Koreans say for both hello and goodbye, and it means peace. An emcee showed about 20 photos from her life and asked her about the people in them. Then a neighbor told the room how Shin would head out for a bowl of cold noodles pushing her walker, and the whole cafe laughed.

That is very nearly the last page of Proverbs. The book of sayings closes with a poem about a capable woman. She is alive the whole way through it: buying a field, sewing for her household, up before dawn. Near the end her children get to their feet and praise her while she's in the room. Then the poem asks for the same thing in public.

Proverbs 31:31Give her of the fruit of her hands! Let her works praise her in the gates!

In an Israelite town, the gate was where the elders sat and everybody did their business. To be praised in the gates was to be praised in front of the neighbors, while you could still hear it. A cafe full of people who know about the noodles is about as close to the gates as a modern town gets.

None of this makes death any smaller. In the Philippines, the comedian Ate Gay, who had stage 4 cancer, held a living funeral on October 15 and died seventeen days later. Plenty of people find the idea morbid, and it isn't for everyone. But the words arrived in time. "Their messages matter while a person is still alive," Ate Gay told reporters that day, after crying through the eulogies.

We wait for the funeral, mostly, because the dead can't blush. Shin hadn't wanted the fuss, and she heard every word anyway. At the end the emcee asked the crowd, "When's the best time of all?" and they shouted back, "Right now!" The blessing in Proverbs was always meant for living ears, and that crowd in Goyang had the timing right.