The funeral was something of a catastrophe, I must say. People are known to exaggerate, but in this case the truth is much funnier, surprising, and, in the end, sadder than anything fiction could offer: the folks were gathering at the church just fine—many from different branches of the family, and all of them friends of my father—when the thought occurred to me that what a shame it was that Dad wasn’t around to watch this; he would have enjoyed himself… although my mother believed he was watching us from Heaven, and was possibly even in attendance, and dancing around the brawling men as they rolled thru the room, in which case he would have seen the lead-up to the tussle that upset his casket from its stand, which struck the floor and opened splaying its contents—one smartly dressed Stanley Smith—across the floor.
Tag: funeral
Lost Pearls
My teenage daughter came running to me this evening, yelling about some silly bracelet she seemed to have lost. I didn’t know what she was talking about until she described the thing: A simple string of pearls. Oh, I thought as it slowly came back. It’s the one she wore on her wrist–when she was buried.
Her Big Day
Her whole life had been leading up to this day, this moment, at the front of the church. With all eyes on her, she looked perfect in her dress, her shoes and her coffin.
Duties
A few days after her funeral, he was heading to pick the kids up from school when he got a call.
It said “Don’t worry honey, I got them”.
Henpecked
There is NO justification for THAT kind of behavior at a funeral!
“Over my dead body,” were her last words, weren’t they?
grief
I don’t usually smoke.
In this moment, however, the only thing more appropriate than a cigarette would be for it to be my funeral instead.
The Worst Heartbreak
“Ahhhh, I feel sooooo good,” slurred the wife before she and her husband passed out from the pills, too drugged to notice the ones that had spilled on the floor.
Their toddler’s funeral that week from an accidental overdose of OxyContin somberly disabused them of that mindset.