We put the "fun" back in Funeral.

Well. My Uncle Terrell passed a week ago. My sister always makes fun of me for saying, "(person's name) passed." I think it's a funny expression. It makes me feel like wearing a hoop skirt and riding side saddle, all ladylike on a horse, and riding up to a plantation and saying to the man who lives there,

"Suh, I'm so terribly sorry to infawm you.... But ow-ah de-ah, sweet Beauregard has passed."

(Same dialect as Gone with the Wind): Your child has been born. Has been born and mercifully has died.

I'm one of those people who typically doesn't do well with death. I usually get really attached to people, so when they pass, I go through a very deep and intense grieving process, and it's down right exhausting. But with Uncle Terrell, I was so happy to know that he wasn't trapped inside his body anymore. He had real bad Alzheimer's and wasn't himself for a long time.

I know that people always say that death is a necessary part of life and all that, like Forrest Gump's mom when she was fixing to croak, but I think that's a crock. It always sucks, no matter what, even when you're happy that the person isn't suffering anymore. Just like break ups always suck, even if you're relieved to get rid of the dimwit you're dating.


Sometimes I need help gaining perspective because I'm notorious for catastrophizing. My best friend in L.A. sent me an email recently when I was saying that I feel like I'm drowning, and he put it like this:

"In my opinion, life is like a book... all the parts of your life are chapters... which means they will all eventually end and move on to the next chapter. Some chapters are boring, sad, annoying, and don't really move the story along that well, and some are exciting, fun, hilarious, suspenseful, romantic, new, and you never want them to end. But, they always end. And, just like in a book, things from previous chapters can reappear in later chapters....the point is- never get too attached to or sick of a particular time in your life, because a new chapter is inevitably around the corner (for better or worse)."

And you know what? He's right.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to Blog was to tell you WHAT HAPPENED at the funeral home DURING THE VISITATION.

I remember one time I was talking to this Australian guy, and he absolutely freaked out when I told him that in the South, we pretty much always have an open casket. People just love showing off their dead bodies around these parts. He thought that was totally sick and in poor taste. Maybe he was right, because ever since he reacted so dramatically when I said, "Oh yeah, you leave your dead body out so everybody can tell it goodbye," I started thinking, "Man. That's kind of disgusting."

So. I HATE funeral homes.

They're always like 20 degrees and you're freezing your face off and that terribly heavy floral smell is suffocating you and old people are trying to KISS YOU ON THE LIPS and old ladies have mustaches and crap in their teeth and lipstick smeared all over the place and you just want to run as fast as you can to that little coffee room in the back and hide under the paper tablecloth until it's time to go. But you can't. You just have to keep hugging people and smelling the smell of carnations and death and suck it up until it's time to leave.

I think visitations are much more graphic than funerals.

At least at funerals, a lot of times, they close the casket, so you don't have to be looking at that locust shell of a person that doesn't even remotely look like the person you used to love.

So there I am at the funeral home during the visitation, and some crazy man keeps telling me that he used to have drug and alcohol addiction problems and he used to work with at-risk youth at the loony bin, but he never even introduced himself to me or told me how he was kin, so he just followed me around telling me about all of his problems, until finally I got saved by some family members and was able to ditch him.

I'm sitting down talking to my Aunt Bev. Aunt Bev is very glamorous and has Parkinson's, so sometimes she has to ride around on a scooter. This is a real picture of her:

So she and I are talking about our boyfriends (her husband died a few years ago. I'll write about that sometime.) and what I'm doing with my life these days and how we miss the old days when I used to go to LSU and stop by her house and we'd sit and visit. And then.....

Someone made the announcement.

"Tomorrow at the funeral we are going to have a closed casket. So if you'd like to say goodbye to Uncle Terrell, now is the time to do so."

I was just sitting there, politely, quietly, minding my own business.

And then.

Memaw grabbed my hand and we made a bee-line for the casket.

Just looking at him made me feel really queasy. He didn't look ANYTHING like Uncle T. I don't like looking at dead bodies shoved in a casket, with the person's face and hands looking like wax and pancake batter.

Maybe I should say that my Memaw has no problem with dead bodies. She isn't creeped out by them at all.

Memaw shoved her hand right into the casket, started patting Uncle Terrell on the arm, rubbing it up and down, up and down.

I was so mortified.

I was dared by one of my cousins to touch my great grandma's dead bod when I was a little kid, so I did it, but that was my first and last (I hope) encounter touching a stiff, cold corpse.

And then guess what happened.

Memaw took her hand off of Uncle Terrell, and then began STROKING MY ARM WITH HER HAND FULL OF DEATH GERMS!


Are.

You.

KIDDING ME?!

I wanted to run away and start throwing up everywhere. I wanted to run through one of those biohazard car wash things that they make you run through if they think you have anthrax.

Now please know that it was nothing against Uncle T. It's just that I hate germs. Especially death germs. I always Purell my hands after we do that hand shaking thing in church. How disgusting.

So. That pretty much scarred me for life.

The next day, the funeral itself was pretty nice, but this lady was sitting behind us and was singing all of the harmony parts to "The Old Rugged Cross," and she was singing in some sort of Disney cartoon voice, and the lady in front of us had a huge, blonde, bouffant hairdo and she smelled so stout that I felt like I'd just stomped on the anthill of those obnoxious people trying to spray you down with perfume in Macy's at Christmas time, so I kept getting distracted. That too-much-perfume-lady kept nodding her head like a parakeet. It drove me insane.

But anyway, the after party was really fun, and I hung out with some family members and we ate a lot of good stuff and drank a lot of good stuff and I heard some funny college stories from older people.

Then we went to New Orleans. I'd write about it, but I'll probably get in immense trouble. All I know is that I was dreading this whole funeral experience since death is so uncomfortable for me, but the whole thing actually wound up being sort of fun.

So let's just say that Anna and I put the fun back in funeral. And I didn't make that up. Props to my dear wonderful former college roommate who is one of the funniest women I know.