More Death and Death Averted

One of our board members died over Memorial Day weekend, and his funeral and the crowd who attended it (me included) were some of the most bizarre people I've ever met. The poor man was very obese, and he had suffered from diabetes for a long time. His foot, for lack of a better explanation, simply exploded one day. He got so big he literally ripped open at the seams. He was in and out of the hospital for that problem for months. A heart attack finally did him in. He was only 62. He had few living family left, but he was very well known in the community, so his visitation was well attended. At the actual funeral, there were probably around 60 people.

I hate funerals. Especially the preachy kind. I always come away thinking "Now how, exactly, does this help comfort the family?" I'm not sure how to enforce what I want done with my own arrangements (and I guess I wouldn't know to care whether they were carried out anyway), but for the sake of everyone else sitting there, I don't want one of those. The older woman who preached the service was quite small. The microphone was above her head, and to have this tiny woman bellowing above a giant man laying open in his coffin...well, he really dwarfed her.

And I don't know what it is about these backwoods hellfire-&-brimstone preachers, but why the hell can't they read properly? It always sounds like they are struggling, and so the emphasis falls on all the wrong words. You can literally tell when they've reached the next line, because it sounds something like this: "Listen to the words of GOD: 'There is no condemnation now for...those who live in union with CHRIST!!!.....Jesus." The Jesus comes out almost as a muffled "Oops. I blew my load too quick." You can't even pretend to get caught up in the emotion of the sermon. She didn't even bother to mention Bob's son, who had died young, nor even his wife. She sucked. I'm sure she thought the same of us. More on her later.

Probably one of the most exciting and death defying moments came with the introduction to someone Director/Buddy had known for a long time. Let us call him Lieutenant Fred. The man lied about his age when he was a kid and went to World War II and ended up working as an MP. When you think about your old country boys, whatever image you conjure up for this man should suffice. Except that he's older than dirt. And majorly deaf--I had to shout in his hearing aids the whole time. Oh, and he's blind in one eye--his sister stabbed it out with a fork when they were kids. He spent the whole time talking D/B's ear off, telling her all his stories that he had saved up from 15 years ago when he saw her last. I wish I were kidding. I also wish I had brought BatMite!, as this old man would've really juiced his vegetables.

After the funeral, there was a celebratory dinner, a giant spread of food. Bob would've totally approved. I had chicken, ham, lasagne, green beans, baked beans, potato salad, pasta salad, tomatoes, rolls with jam, raisen cake, and several other things I've already forgotten about. I had these things twice, in honor of Bob. Lt. Fred hadn't known there would be a dinner, and was excessively delighted to find out about it, and as this seemed to be his first social outing in probably six months, he absolutely insisted we carpool to this little community settlement building. Back in the back of the backwoods. Oh, and he insisted on driving. I'll remind you that he is mostly deaf and blind in one eye.

Driving was an adventure. We had to back up twice, which turned into a community project, Lt. Fred being both deaf and partially blind. He wouldn't have heard the screeching brakes anyway. Twice he pulled onto a major intersection without even bothering to look for other cars. It takes the term "blind spot" to a whole new level. He also had the habit of looking for extended periods of time at D/B while he was driving, along the lines of, "Now, did you know that man?" ::prolonged stare--with the good eye:: I'm sure he could see absolutely nothing but her face for stretches of time that felt like eons. And then eventually, of course, he had to drive us back. While we were eating, he also had the habit of talking extraordinarily loudly (because he was mostly deaf) and also couldn't hear when the crowd had fallen quiet because there was, for example, the prayer over the food. So we were constantly shushing him before he bellowed his typically sarcastic comments over the whole crowd. Pretty funny, really. Especially since his favorite phrase seemed to be "So-n-so ain't worth the powder to blow him to hell!!"

So, apart from having known and cared about Bob, the atheist, the Harley riding hard drinker, and the crotchety old partially blind and mostly deaf SOB found themselves in a weird position at this church community building eating all the food. It sounds like the start of a joke, and it does have a punch line. The best moment came when one of those unforeseen and magic hushes fell over the crowd. One of us had her mouth crammed with chicken, ham, lasagne, etc. otherwise she probably would've been implicated as well. As if on cue, no one else was speaking except the other two, quite loudly as a matter of fact:

D/B: I'll be damned! There's that goddamn whore that Jake liked to fuck so much.

Lt. Fred: Ain't worth the powder to blow her to hell!!

We were sitting next to the preacher. Cue hasty retreat, exit stage left.

-- Virgil