The funeral home was empty when I arrived. Well, except for the dead body of my favorite uncle, of course. And then there was the guy who worked the door. What did they call that guy again? The maitre d'? The bouncer? I guess he was sort of a bouncer. If anyone got out of line and got into a fight with the corpse, he'd be there to break it up. But seriously folks, you can never be too sure these days.
There were so many flowers in the place, the aroma throughout the building reminded me of my trip to Hawaii. It was quite nice, really, until I saw my uncle lying face-down in the coffin. That bastard has a way of ruining everything.
Oh, and by the way. The reason my uncle was face-down was not because of the hunting accident per se, but because the head mortician was away on vacation in Oahu, and the funeral home's summer intern was the only person available to prepare the body. I found out later that the intern had actually recently dropped her major in death services, and was now planning to go into hotel management. Evidently, she needed the three credits to graduate. To make a long story short, the intern wasn't paying much attention to what she was doing, and by the time she was finished, my uncle's face looked like one of the pheasants he had shot at close range with that overpowered shotgun of his. Since my aunt had insisted on an open-casket wake, the funeral home management decided it would be best to leave my uncle face-down.
Now, if I told you someone amongst us had said "what an ass", you might think I was kidding. The fact is, the women in my family always thought my uncle had quite a remarkable rear end, so the comment was actually said in good cheer. Plus, it was said by my cousin Claire, the necrophiliac, so trust me, no pun was intended.
Speaking of puns, or rather ironies, I never quite understood why wakes and funerals always had all those colorful flowers, but everybody had to dress in black. And the fact that you rarely ever see any black roses at a funeral is even more surprising. What the hell would you want a black rose for, if not for a funeral? What would be really funny would be black roses at a Baptism. Even better, have you heard about how babies are sometimes born with tails? Ok, so not like reptile tails or anything, but they are honest-to-goodness tails. What happens is that the backbone extends well beyond the baby's ass, and it's actually covered with skin and everything. Anyway, what would be great is if you kept the tail on the baby until after the baptism, decorated the church with about a thousand black roses, and dyed the baptismal water blood-red. It's too bad Allen Funt isn't alive anymore, because that sure would make a damn fine Candid Camera episode, wouldn't you say?
So anyway, I see my uncle lying there face-down, and nearly lose my breakfast. His obituary was embarrassing enough, with the hunting accident and all, he didn't need the Associated Press circulating a story world-wide about the nephew who puked on his dead uncle's ass hours before he returned to the earth.
Speaking of which, what is it with this "return to the earth" phrase? What are we, a bunch of zombies from Night of the Living Dead? Am I missing something, or do babies come out of a woman's uterus? I have never once seen a baby get plucked out of the ground like some kind of, I don't know, mandrake root. Who starts these expressions, anyway? Some kind of Mother Nature Death Cult? I mean, if you're going to lie to your kids about where babies come from, at least stick with the pelican story. Goddamn environmentalist nuts.
Now where was I. Oh, that's right, I'm about to puke because my dead uncle, ass in full view, is lying there with the coffin lid wide open. And what's the deal with these open casket funerals? What exactly is the rationale behind wanting to see your loved ones dead? Your enemies, I can understand. In fact, I'd like to see my enemies during the process of death, not just afterwards. Sort of like an instant-replay. Actually, what they should really do if the person was a real asshole is give out videos of the guy's death. There are some moments you just want to relive over and over. That's what I call a Kodak moment.
But back to seeing your friends and family dead. Do you really need to have the memory of some stiff, lifeless piece of flesh filed in your brain right alongside that family reunion where you finally got to realize what a warm, generous, human being your uncle so-and-so was? Or is it just that people don't trust the damn obituaries? Do you really need to see your dead friends and relatives because you "don't believe everything you read"? Christ, I say take they coroner's word for it. If he says "dead", he probably means dead.
So the wake starts. To be specific, it wasn't really a wake, because the wake was the night before. This was really the pre-funeral show. Everyone got to pay their last respects to my uncle's ass.
Some people stood at the coffin and prayed for several minutes. Since I was behind them, though, I couldn't tell if they had their eyes closed. I was kind of wondering how you keep a prayer straight while staring at a guy's ass. I couldn't even rattle off a quick Our Father with that ass in my face. I think I would have lost it, and you can forget about that invitation to Cousin Judy's wedding if I burst out laughing at her father while he lay there in the coffin.
So she says, "Is this how you picture your funeral?"
And I says, "No thanks. I'll take mine de-coffinated."
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