Meeting About Death

I'm honestly not even sure where to begin with this post.

I feel like this is a story that needs to be told, but I know me, and I'm afraid that I will keep writing these tangential anecdotes that will eventually lead me to forget what I was talking about in the first place...

I know me, I've seen me do it...



Ok, I think I've created some semblance of an outline for writing this in my head... how very 9th grade English class of me...

I have a fantastic friend, and despite her best efforts, her family hates her... Now, I need to clarify that her immediate family only consists of two people, and we assume they love her, despite how misguided their love may be. But, her extended family is huge, and they are kind of like a religious cult. A cult with all the bad and none of the good. Are there good religious cults?

See... I need to stop right there...

Anyway, they all 'love' each other, but really they show that love by trying to prove that they are better then each other.

So, as the dutiful friend that I am, whenever there is a 'family' event, I tag along.

As it turns out, everyone loves me (this actually happens a lot) which I use as a complete license to kill. I take no prisoners, I say and do the most inappropriate things to no avail... I remain loved.

My friend and I understand that any 'family' event is much more tolerable when we have strength in numbers, even if our number is two. The 'family' also tends to treat her with at least basic respect when I'm around mainly because they don't want to look bad in front of an outsider... that's me baby... where as if I was not there, they would talk about her behind her back... while she is standing in front of them...

Why does she bother to go to these 'family' gatherings you might ask? Well, because her absence would be 10 times worse. There would be phone calls, e-mails, facebook and myspace posts, there would be texting, tweets, faxes, telegraphs sent, Western Union telegrams (do they still do that? well, no matter, these people could force them to start back up).



I've have never felt comfortable at funerals. In a way I'm lucky, I've never had to deal with someone I truly care about passing. Every funeral I've ever been to is someone who I am at best, loosely associated with. So while, I'm sad that they are dead, and I'm sad for those who loved them, I'm also sad that I have to be there. Funerals are kinda like meetings... there's a lot of protocol involved, and I never know what's going on, because I lack the ability to pay attention. I tend to find humor in the least humorous situations so I sometimes have to suppress not only my inner monologue, but I have to keep it from escaping... and it is a difficult job...



Here I am with my friend at a 'family' funeral, oh joy... we're in the parking lot of the funeral home which is a brightly yellow painted old building, and it's maybe 9:50AM. The funeral was scheduled to begin at 10:00AM. The funeral people (I'm sure they must have an official title, but I can't think of what it might be) are directing traffic into parking spaces, because while the funeral home is quite large, the parking lot is um... not...

Everyone is backing up into parking spaces so that we can all block each other in and make sure that no one will be able to escape before what I'm sure will be the bitter end. I'm good at backing a car up, so after I wait for the car in front of me to figure out how to make what should have been a simple parking maneuver happen, I swing into the next space. We sit the car and figure we'll just take a second to take a deep breath and put our game faces on...

This is when I notice that a woman in the car next to us is pounding a can of beer... Apparently we were not the only ones who felt that we "needed a moment"...

I for one feel like this is a ray of bright light in what is otherwise almost guaranteed to be a dark and boring day.



We abandon the safety of the car and head towards the door of the funeral home. It is now 10:00AM. There was no waiting around, the funeral people are all pissed that we are late. We are shuffled off to a small room right off of the main front foyer which is clearly an overflow room. We have it all, bright pink flower print wall paper, a shelf of little, overly decorative tea cups, furniture from a time when people must have been much, much smaller, and not placed any value on the comfort of sitting, and... a little flat screen TV in the corner.

So, we are now watching the service on the flat screen while having no idea where in this large funeral home the main event is actually taking place.

There is a religious guy at the podium speaking. As it turns out, I apparently can't be any more specific then that because I was paying so little attention to the actual service I'm not even sure what religion the speaker was.  I'm still trying to suppress how funny I find the ridiculously decorated room we're in when I spot it... 

Crossing the bottom of the TV screen is the top of a dark blond head belonging to some small child who has managed to escape their parents... the head slowly moves across the TV screen again... now I am fixated on the TV. This funeral is starting to become entertaining, and not my inner monologue entertaining, I mean literally entertaining. I look over at my friend to see if she has also noticed 'loose small child'... she clearly has, and we exchange a wry smile.

Then we see the little blond head go across the TV screen at a much higher rate of speed. This fantastic visual is accompanied by a distinct "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." in the floor.

Luckily, because the building is old, and clearly there are wood floors under the beautiful fuchsia carpet, the "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." sound tells us that the 'main event' room must be very close.

So the little blond head continues to streak across the bottom of the TV from one side to the other, the "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." continues, the religious guy at the podium hasn't missed a beat. God, whatever... dead guy, whatever... blah, blah, blah, whatever... little blond head... "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." it's really a beautiful service. Then the little blond head runs right into the room we are sitting in.

At least now we can identify the child as a boy... maybe 4 years old, and of course other people in the room know who is he, and they want to hug and fawn all over him, and no one seems to care that he has been running back and forth in front of the podium for the last 10 minutes, particularly his parents who haven't bothered to stop him while he was at least in the same room with them. I'm therefore not at all surprised that they don't bother to see where he has run off too...

Ok, tangent... not that I remember going to funerals when I was 4, but I can guarantee that there is no way in hell I would have tried to run away from my parents and cause a scene in front of other people. Had I done that, I would have had to take my 4 year old ass right out the door and never come back, because I would have had a greater chance of survival on my own at 4, then heading back to my parents after doing something like that...

I have to turn to my friend and say, "are you fucking kidding me... who's fucking kid is this?" She understands both my annoyance and sheer joy at the situation.

So, this single brief visit from little blond boy (which is now how 'he' will be referred too because I never cared to find out what his name was)  has now devolved into the kid literally running laps around the funeral home.

I am now laughing, I'm trying to keep it as quietly and too myself as possible, but I am obviously laughing out loud, and anyone in the room who isn't mesmerized by the religious guy's words has noticed that I find the complete absurdity of what is going on quite funny.

All you can hear other then the TV is "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." and here comes little blond boy... and there goes little blond boy, and more "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." and then you see his little blond head streak across the bottom of the TV, and this process just repeats itself over and over again.

Through all of this religious guy still doesn't slow down at all.



Now, I'm sure you're thinking this is funny, and ok, little kids are unpredictable, and sure little blond boy's parents are assholes, but that this is the end of the story...

Oh no... no, no, no... we're just getting warmed up here people... take a moment, get up and stretch, use the bathroom, get yourself a drink... whatever you need, because we're in this together.

Ok, ready?



Religious guy finally brings his 25 minute long string of words that I didn't listen to, in for a landing... and once he touches down, as he's taxing into the gate he finishes with "is there anyone else who would like to say a few words?"

All that anyone could hope to do is reuse all of his words, but try to string them together in a different order. Religious guy has already said every word there is to be said.

Or so I thought...

After a long pause where I am thinking two things. 1, I'm surprised given the number of people who must be here, there isn't a single other person who wants to say a few words. 2, maybe we'll be able to get the fuck outta here.

Then someone stands up. I can't see this, but it must have happened because I can't think of any other way they would have managed to facilitate their arrival at the podium.

New guy begins to speak. I begin to listen. After about 5 minuets two things become clear. The first is that I have no idea what new guy is talking about. He seems to be simply relaying stories of all the places he's traveled when he was much younger. The second is that none of anything he's saying seems to have a single thing to do with the dead guy.

This goes on for nearly 15 more minutes, and again, I really can't believe how this funeral service has gone. We're almost 45 minuets into this thing, and this has been, in totality, the most ridiculous funeral I've ever attended. New guy is still talking entirely about himself, little blond boy is still lapping the funeral home, however he has started altering directions, perhaps he was getting dizzy. I'm am wishing I had a cocktail, something of the late breakfast variety would have been excellent, vodka and OJ would have hit the spot. Vodka and Veuve would have probably been more appropriate for the way my friend and I were dressed, but I'm no drink snob...   

Then it happened, the new guy said "and then when I was 14 my parents sent me to Boston"... ok, at least a city I have been to, so I'm now re-focused on the speaker. Suddenly after 15 minutes of talking about himself the dead guy becomes a participant in his story. As it turns out the dead guy picked him up from the airport... or bus depot, I really don't remember which, and so the story goes on about how the dead guy shows him around the city, and they go here, and they go there, and it's all very run off the mill, and then he says the dead guy took him to a bathhouse...

Have you ever had a Scooby-Doo moment? A moment where you actually tilt your head and make an audible "whhhoooaaaa"... kinda sound... I had a full blow Scooby-Doo moment, I had to turn to my friend and ask, did he just say "bathhouse?"...

I know for a fact that the first speaker... remember religious guy who used all the words?... well I know he omitted the word "bathhouse"... Had he said "bathhouse" I would have had a Scooby-Doo moment 45 minutes sooner.

New guy, now has my fully undivided attention. I'm not even noticing little blond boy who I'm sure is still flying around the funeral home. New guy continues on, apparently feeling completely uninhibited by his surroundings or the various ages of his audience, to talk about how he had never been to a bathhouse. Apparently, because he wasn't sure if everyone listening knew what a bathhouse was, he then proceeded to describe in rather vivid detail what a bathhouse is and what is done there. I mean, he even talked about the towels, although from the story, he was the only one wearing one.

I must have had a grin from ear to ear... it is literally all I can do not to be high five-ing the people sitting around me. This has been the best funeral ever. This funeral has seriously delivered.

-People were drinking in the parking lot before this even started,
-Little blond boy is running around like someone had clearly fed the poor kid meth just to see what would happen,
-New guy is talking all about how he didn't feel comfortable at 14 being naked around all these older men in the bathhouse he was taken too by the dead guy while in Boston.

And for the record, I'm sorry, but there is no way he remembered all those details about the internal workings of a bathhouse from the 'one time' he went there when he was 14... I think he liked it, and has visited many other bathhouses over the years. That not withstanding, the fact that the best thing he could come up with to regale the audience, at poor dead guys funeral, was a story about underage homoerotic nudity... well that's just art...

It was... it was like watching really good performance art, where you and only a few other people realize it's art, and everyone else is either too stunned or too polite or too stupid to know what's going on, and/or to say or do anything.

New guy finally wraps up his long ass and completely inappropriate story and religious guy then dictates how the processional will walk past the casket. Of course being in the 'arrived too late to get seats in the main event room' we get to go first, and then proceed to do the walk of shame in front of everyone who arrived early. I would normally have felt some sort of uncomfortableness about this whole process, but I'm still so high on life from how this funeral has gone, I could have walked down the line naked, but that ship had already sailed 20 minutes ago.

Please feel free to comment, -Me