Stranger than this night….
What could be stranger than this night
Undisciplined children
And a tube of GLUUUEE…
Recently, I wrote about a friend of the family who had passed away. I frantically called my cousin to make sure that she heard about the passing from someone’s voice rather than a Facebook status update. It is quite disconcerting to find out about deaths that way. Finding out about the OD or the untimely trampling by a zoo animal of a celebrity that you will never meet is one thing, but it is a bit weird if you actually knew the person and would normally hear through other channels.
The funeral was equally as unconventional. Granted, I had seen it all. One day, I will tell you about my brief stint in working at a funeral home but that’s for another day. Some people wanted Frank Sinatra and a smog machine. Of course, not the REAL Frank Sinatra because he’s dead, but his music. There aren’t too many Sinatra impersonators, are there? Well they are, but they don’t call them that. They call them “tributes” and “memories of Sinatra” versus “JimBob the Sinatra Impersonator.
At any rate, the funeral was actually quite tasteful. It was the various behaviors that made it a day we won’t forget for a very long time. There was a child in the family that was quite amok. Now, I love kids but I think there is a time and a place. When I was two or three years old, I would have had a babysitter. If I made an actual appearance at a visitation or a funeral, it would be brief and not every day of the three day affair. Nerves ran thin and it was assumed that a three year old was capable of making her own judgement calls. Crackers, french fries and toys were all over the place. On top of it, since apparently she had been encouraged to sing into the microphone the night before, the funeral guests were treated to shrieking and wailing during the service. I nearly split an ear drum. A gentleman who I presumed was a family member deftly twisted his hearing aid to “off” for the rest of the ceremony.
It just went downhill from there. The tot was running around and jumped up on the kneeler to dangle her body into the casket. Not only did a parent not remove her, fearing that a major tumbling would come down, but they actually encouraged it. They thought that she must be “expressing her grief.” Apparently, she was smothering french fries all over her grandmother’s face, and was shrieking because her grandmother wasn’t “eating the french fries.”
I am not one to criticize other people about their parenting skills. Okay I am. But I don’t have room to talk because I do not have children. However, I think i have at least one pinky finger of common sense. Actually, its a different finger, but it would be very rude to hold it up to show people. That would be crossing a line.
