Friday, March 10, 2006

Service prep

Spent the morning going thru CDs, re-arranging, sorting, finding lost ones. Trying to learn the sound system here. Just in time for a nephew to get here to practice his song for today's funeral. He sounds very good. But I may get tired of the song soon. He's belting it out like he's on American Idol. The flower guy came, and he put everything in the wrong place, so now Tom's rearranging it, a little disgustedly.

It's later now, the family is here, service has begun. Daughter was fashionably late. chaplain asked (politely) if she'd gotten stuck in traffic. She replied that she'd gotten lost in her own traffic. Hmm.

the Chaplain is telling jokes, they aren't getting many laughs. I'm chuckling almost hysterically in the office. It's that childish giggle that I can barely suppress. He's telling stories about the deceased to amuse the crowd. Hopefully others are at least smiling and the chaplain isn't feeling like he's left out in the cold. Now he's telling how the husband met his deceased wife, it's weird to hear the stories, knowing that she died three weeks ago and many of these same people came to her funeral here.

He was in the military, so he got the military honors. Flag ceremony and 21 gun salute. then another gentleman played Taps. It was haunting, I was surprised how quickly I teared up. Then I realized so did Tom and so did several of the guys giving the salute. It's just an awesome thing they do for their fellow military men.

On my drive home I saw a bunch of cars parked at a house, I thought to myself how odd it would be if it was the family. I couldn't believe when I saw the daughter milling around outside with a bunch of old guys. They were smoking and having Miller Lites, well I couldn't read the labels, but I'd overheard them earlier saying that's what they were gonna have. Talk about odd, I wondered if I should wave as I drove by.

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