Today was the funeral for Hubby's uncle. It was a very nice service with a lot of wonderful memories shared by several people. Twinkle went and, aside from acting like the 5 year old that she is, did well. I'm not sure the child could listen to save her life. Literally. But that's another post.
Last night was the visitation. These are usually right up there with bamboo shoots under the fingernails with me because they usually involve an open casket. I don't have anything against seeing dead bodies. What bugs me is the number of people that say, "Oh, he/she looks so good." Uh, no. He looks dead. He never looked like this in real life. He would never wear that color lipstick.
Luckily, the visitation and the funeral were both closed casket. So, I got to hear other ridiculous statements instead. Not the least of which came from my mother in law - the sister of the recently departed:
"We sprung for the flowers on the casket." Me: Hmm, ok. Hubby: "Are they real?" while walking toward the huge spray of who knows how many long stemmed red roses on the casket. MIL: "Well, I would hope so considering how much I paid for it."
Did you see that coming? Wait, you don't know my MIL. You may not have seen it coming. She, as is her usual, went on to repeat 3 or 4 variations on the theme of "I spent a lot of money on the flowers". OK, we get it. You're wonderful to spend so much money on your one and only brother who died too young. OK, OK!!!! (I think 60 is too young)
The other interesting "episode" from the visitation involved the presence of a journal of the departed. It was one of those that has a different question on each page and in answering you kind of write most everything that has occurred during your life. I think it's a great thing to have when you've lost a loved one. MIL decided "I'm going to read J's diary". OK, live it up. Then I hear, "Well!" Hmmm, I think, she's gonna get herself worked up. She was on a page where the question was something along the lines of listing happy memories with your siblings. Dear Departed J, who had one sibling, apparently had no wonderful, heart-stopping memories involving his sister, my MIL, and wrote just that.
She pointed this out to me and I said, "You need to put that book down and stop reading it." Which, of course, she did NOT do. Fast forward five minutes and I hear another Marge Simpson grumble. I'm not sure what the question was, but Uncle J had written something along the lines of "I think I was treated better because [MIL] always picked on me." OK, this is something even I know, and I'm only married into this nuthouse. I told her again, "REALLY, put the book down." NOPE. I wandered away. She read every page. I'm sure she missed some really profound deep thoughts in there. Having cancer for 2 years can make a person think. But, I think she was looking for her name. I think there are issues to be sorted, and I wonder if she'll ever sort them out.
What's interesting is J had 2 children, one male, one female. As did my MIL. I can't say the relationship between Hubby and his sister is great, but they don't hate each other. Their cousins? HATE. Apparently they don't really speak to each other. EVER. Wait that's not true. The did manage to trade comments over their father's death bed on Monday. And evil eye looks. They are polar opposites and can't stand each other. There's way too much to go into, but it's just crazy. I could detail why I think one is worse than the other, but again, I don't have all of the facts. There is probably so much that has gone on between them that I can't even fathom.
All in all, it was nice to talk about fond memories of J. Some of the behavior was slightly entertaining if also sad. Some of the behavior was just annoying and wrong.
What more could you want out of a funeral?
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