funeral

If you know me, you probably realize that I don’t gain much comfort from religion. I’m too much of a cynic, apparently.

This weekend we went to the funeral for my brother-in-law. I really didn’t know him, I met him at my wedding and perhaps saw him a couple other times. He left home when my wife was very young (high chair? I think) and never came back.

So, naturally, my wife said the eulogy. She’s great. She’s going to do my eulogy, because she’ll make me sound so much better than I really am. Maybe make somebody smile or something. Anyway, where was I?

Oh, yeah, we went to the funeral. Of course, funerals are mostly for the people left behind. Nice things were said. The priest explained how it was OK with God that he had followed his own path and questioned everything, how he had turned his back on his firstborn as well as his nine brothers and sisters and parents. Okay, he didn’t say all that, but isn’t that what he meant? You’re dead now, so God forgives you and welcomes you into heaven, because the people you left behind forty years ago all got together and paid for a box and spent some time praying for you.

I told you I was a cynic. You didn’t believe me?

Well, I don’t find much comfort in any of this, and I think that’s a problem, because I’m supposed to. I guess I need to sort it all out before I get hit by a bus or something.

I found this amusing though.

Oh, and my kids decided that Jesus probably got the first Playstation 3, and didn’t even have to wait in line, since his dad has connections in high places.

Well, what a weekend! And it’s not even midnite on Saturday!

We’ve had:

• Dancing
• singing
• Feeding ducks (they like Teddy Grahams better than Ritz Bits)
• paper airplanes
• a random basketball (nobody knows who it belongs to)
• picking “flowers”
• screaming
• crying

And - that was just at the cemetery!

We also had two basketball games (one high school, one six years old and under), too much to eat, movies, and about nine hours in the van.

In fact, I had so much fun, I’ll just have to tell you about it later. I’m pooped, and I’m going to look up some stuff for my run tomorrow and go to bed.

As a general rule, funerals suck. That’s about as bluntly as I can put it. Not many redeeming qualities.

So, since I don’t want to wallow in the mire about the funeral we went to this weekend, I’ll stick to the lightness that can only be brought about through the eyes of children.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes and such:

Baby: “She’s sleeping!” (finger to lips) “Shhh…”

Da boys: “Does she have any legs? Where are her legs? I wanna see her legs!”

Oldest: “So, you don’t turn to dust when you die!”
Mom: “No, honey, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is an expression.”
Oldest: “But what about on Buffy?”

Oldest: “I’m not going to wear my boxers. Because if it sticks out any, Superman doesn’t go with my suit.”

Nobody else brought their two year old. It was quickly apparent why. I didn’t actually hear a single word of the rosary or funeral itself, since I was out walking the baby.

My favorite mental snapshot: The two of us walking through a moonlit cemetary (while missing the Rosary); and an airliner passed close overhead (we’re a mile or two from the airport). My baby started jumping up and down, excited because she was sure that she brought the airplane so close. We practiced our hand signals and I’m sure she’s now qualified to land fighters on an aircraft carrier. Kinda.

If you happened to land at Love Field on Saturday morning, say between ten and noon, and looked down out of the right side of the plane? The really cute girl in the pink dress with her hair up (in a black hairbow, natch’) waving at you? That was us. So hi.

We waved at every plane. Every. Damn. Plane.

The oldest graves I saw showed they died in the mid 1950’s. There was one little girl that died at two weeks of age on Sept. 10, 2001. There were way too many that were in their teens and twenties. Graveyards are strange places.

You can’t raise the dead by screaming. Or by jumping up and down on their graves. Don’t ask how we know this.