Funerals

It’s never easy when someone dies. It’s never easy when somebody else’s someone dies and you have to be there for them. Especially when you are like me. And you laugh. At funerals.

I’m never quite meeting people’s expectations. 

Recently, my best friend’s grandfather died.

The coffin was open. The man was right there.

I walked in with another friend and we hugged her. She was crying. At some point me and this friend started speaking about something completely unrelated. We giggled and with all the snifflers, we decided to take it outside. There, there was no stopping us. To this day I cannot recall what we were saying just that we were about to wet ourselves in the middle of a funeral home. There were tears and snot.

Not very becoming, as my mother would say.

At another time, my mother’s brother died. He was my uncle but I never really knew him. The night before the funeral my mother and her sisters were gathered around my grandmother. They’d been crying and mourning all day. I was sitting on a dining room chair when they all fell asleep around me. Prostrate in odd positions. Arms hanging off furniture. Legs melting into the rug. My grandmother was a ghastly sight as her plump figure was about to slip off the couch, her head hung back and her mouth was wide open.

I lost it when a fly landed on her lip and with a snore she almost swallowed it.