Life at a Funeral

Everyone who is my friend on Facebook, a contact on my BB Messenger, or a follower on Twitter knows all about my recent mini mid-mid life crises. I have been lamenting and moaning about what I perceived for a scary and brief moment to be the end of my youth as I’d known it.

Basically I freaked out. I guess it had something to do with the recent rash of rapid changes that I’ve gone through in the last year or two. All of a sudden, I found myself part of a totally new demographic and I was scared. No. Terrified Actually. Of what? You may wonder. The truth is, I don’t really know. I guess I worried that I wasn’t ready to face the new situations and circumstances life was about to throw my way.

Someone I perceive to be incredibly wise said something about fear. He said, that the only reason people get afraid is because they face new circumstances that they have never been in before, they are not sure what the appropriate line of action should be, so they begin to worry and feel under pressure. I think that described my situation exactly.

All my thinking about life, and aging and fear and death (I know, very morbid, forgive) led me to have a sort of mini vision of what my funeral might be like.

So I closed my eyes and visualized myself as a Spirit of sorts hovering (ok, ok, actually I was just standing) beside my gravesite as the internment service took place.

I saw my grown up children, they all looked quite sad, each of them was lost in their own thoughts, each going over a different memory of their Mommy that stood out in their minds as special; my eldest daughter remembered the day I came home from the hospital with her baby brother in my arms, smiling as I gave her a peek at her new sibling, and asking if she was excited to be a big sister. She wasn’t, and for the next one year, she’d harbored secret hopes of someone mistakenly throwing the baby out with the trash.

My son, remembering that time when he was a teenager and I found out he’d cheated on a school test. I didn’t react the way he’d expected me too, with a lot of anger yelling, instead, I’d calmly sat him down and made him prove he wasn’t a totally dummy by making him read War and Peace in the Original Russian twice, and then writing a 15,000 word essay on it. It went a long way towards making him the man he was today, since then, the closest he’d come to reading a book was going over the menu at his favorite Italian restaurant.

My last born, remembering how I’d had tears in my eyes on her wedding day, as I told her that I couldn’t believe that my baby was getting married and would soon be having babies of her own. She’d had tears in her eyes too. She couldn’t believe she’d been hoodwinked into marrying her high school boyfriend whom she’d recently found out was not actually working as an engineer in Canada. The closest thing to an engineering job he’d got was operating the mechanical false teeth cleaner at the old people’s home in Saskatchewan. In fact, he was extremely broke.

                               
Some of my oldest and dearest friends, stood together in a cluster, dabbing at their eyes, together, they’ve had to bury seven friends that year. One of my good friends, DeeDee is getting very emotional, she is 99 years old and has lost total control of her bowels, at the most inappropriate moment as the minister calls for a moment of silence, she farts loudly.

My grandchildren are standing in front of their respective parents and they are extremely bored. The Nineteen year old, thinks for a moment the grandma wasn’t so bad and it was kind of sad that they’d never get to see her again, then she remembers that she is going to the movies with her friends the next day and idly begins to go through her closet, mentally picking out an appropriately cute outfit.

The seven year old, pinches his five year old sister at regular intervals when he is sure no one is watching, she smacks his head in response, and their squabbling continues unnoticed

The fourteen year old nod’s his head in rhythm to the music he’s listening to on his Super Trendy Mp3/computer/phone/wireless satellite gadget which also makes toast bread. He is listening to Piddly Diddly, winner of the hotest rapper award for the year 2085. From time to time, he mouths the lyrics to the song, he thinks he is a gifted rapper and his social network profiles already bear his stage name; Bow Chica Wow-Wow. He just knows he's going to be a world famous rapper when he grows up

The Priest tries to round up the service, he is tired of trying to swat away flies with one hand, while reciting the same lines he has had to at a hundred other funerals. He knows all the words by heart, he also knows that no one is actually paying attention aside from the light-skinned old lady who is presently digging her nose. The other old women are all partly deaf and cannot hear a thing.

Finally, it is done with and everybody can go home.

The grown up children line up to pour sand into the grave as they pay their last respects, the grandchildren hurriedly begin to sprint towards the car park, the grave diggers move closer, it will soon be time for them to finish their job and close the grave.

The Priest is helping the old ladies slowly descend the step leading down from the grave.

The Light Skinned old lady farts again

Then there is silence



Cheers