VERY SUPERSTITIOUS: When I was a kid, I was a bit superstitious. Maybe I still am, despite my life-long efforts to be a man of reason, a Renaissance man, a man of the Enlightenment. One of the most spooky (and thus effective) superstitions that I know of came from my cousin Mike at around the age of 11 or 12. Mike told me that it was bad luck to count the number of cars in a funeral procession. He said that he once did it, and a day later he got hit in the head with a pipe. So ever since then, I always did my best not to start counting when a funeral procession was driving past me. I would look away, or start humming the national anthem, or do something to distract myself. And it seemed to work, as I haven’t been hit in the head with a pipe yet (although I’ve had many other forms of “bad luck” in my life, as has everyone else).

On another day long ago, the same cousin and I pondered the fact that superstitions aren’t entirely irrational. The one about walking under ladders is obvious. Because mirrors were once hugely expensive, the superstition about cracks in the looking glass encouraged good care of them. As to black cats, well, that one is more Freudian in nature. However, the superstition against counting cars in a funeral procession does in fact make a point, maybe an important point. When you see a funeral procession going by, something important is happening. Instead of counting cars (or trying to avoid counting cars, as I have done for so many years), it might do everyone on the sidelines some good to ponder the question of human mortality. We might extend a bit of sympathy in our hearts to those in that procession who will miss the decedent, whether emotionally or financially (or both, as is often the case). We might hold solemn the end of another human life, the finishing of another story in the book of humankind. We probably don’t know the person who died, but hey – for whom do the bells toll, anyway?

A person might also be tempted to count the cars in a funeral so as to gauge the decedent’s importance. If there were just a few cars, the deceased man or woman was probably just another schmuck. If there are 30 cars or so and they’re mostly big and expensive – well then, maybe we have a bigshot funeral going by, a corporate president or a politician.

Again, though, such thinking deserves a pipe to the head. Saints often die lonely deaths, and people who did a lot of harm in this world are often well celebrated upon their passing (celebrated with acclaim, that is, not with raw truth). If “the other side” truly exists and there are hosts of angels waiting at the gates, hopefully they do a better job of gaging the worth of a person when she or he enters their realm, than we do when they pass from us.

Superstition ain’t the way, as Stevie Wonder sang. But with regard to superstitions about funerals, perhaps there is a point to be made – i.e., if you can get beyond counting or trying not to count.