The Brazilian man who walked into his own funeral has taught us all a vital life lesson | Tim Dowling

If you want to hear your friends say good things about you, faking your own death is definitely not the way to do it

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom and Huckleberry Finn, both presumed dead, walk into the middle of their funeral service. The rare chance to hear the sobs of one's own mourners is, for Tom, the proudest moment of his life". This may be the single recorded instance, fictional or otherwise, of this sort of thing going well.

Last month, Baltazar Lemos, a 60-year-old Brazilian ceremonista and conductor of many funerals, got to thinking about his own legacy after presiding over a service at which only two mourners had turned up. He decided to satisfy his curiosity by faking his own death: one day, he posted a picture of himself on social media outside a Sao Paulo hospital; the next day, he announced his demise.

Tim Dowling is a regular Guardian contributor