Not everyone has a favorite memory from a Grandmother’s
funeral; I am not everyone.
For reasons that I will remain blissfully ignorant of, my
father’s brothers do not get along.
People have told me their sides of the story, besides Stella Maris, when
‘those people’ talk to me I think of baseball or recite the books of the Bible
in my head until it goes away. You
would be amazed at how many things thinking about baseball can fix. Because of whatever-their-problem-is my
cousins and I are not close and do not see each other often, apparently someone
in our extended network has to kick-off for us to be in the same place.
This is, really, one of my favorite stories.
The day before my grandmother’s internment there was, of course, a viewing. For those of you who aren’t up to date with the burial habits of white people a ‘viewing’ is a wake where the white people in question are too cheap to provide food and alcohol. To be fair, my family is full of lazy fat-lards who can skip the hors d’oeuvres and don’t need alcohol to be assholes.
I went to the viewing with Chaos Bean and our cousin Alison, our parents traveled in another car. When we arrived at the funeral home (many of the family cannot go into a church, it would combust) we mingled with the people there and talked to different cousins. Chaos Bean and I at least can recognize our cousins and put a name with a face.
Now, I don’t know what the drama is but I know who is angry with whom. I know that a bad idea would be for me to talk to my cousin Derek because it gets peoples rankles up so as soon as I spotted the kid I went over and shook his hand. I was really tempted to hug him, but I don’t hug people and it would have been obvious that I was being incorrigible. Now, Alison is with me at this point and as the youngest and the one who is loved by her parents she hasn’t seen these people in a long time and she was a toddler when she did.
I hadn’t seen Derek in years and he looks at me, looks at Alison and says, “She’s hot, is she your girlfriend.”
And, really, I hope to God that somewhere there is a blog post about how his brother or someone put him up to that. I really, really do. Alison and I do not resemble each other in the slightest but I still hope this was a joke I’m still not let in on.
The rest of that interaction is deliciously awkward, of course. Being the cousin who was born in the South – in fact the only one born outside of civilization – it does seem plausible that I would consider dating a family member but I was raised by good Christian Americans who wouldn’t cotton to the idea of intramural dating.
This interaction is one of the most storied and discussed ones of all time and, besides the question of if there was an organ or not, is the most discussed and well-remembered story of our grandmother’s funeral. I know it’s not right to have a favorite story or even funny stories at all from a funeral but please remember: my apple did not fall far from the tree.
This entry was brought to you by: the number ten.
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