(no subject)

[cblj_backup]

Lucky: Were you pacing around upstairs at all last night?
Me: No -- I got up once or twice but never for very long.
Emmy: I didn't sleep well, but I didn't get up at all. Why?
Lucky: We both heard someone going up and down the stairs. Maybe it was the neighbors walking around their place.
Me: Well, Mama Tickey hasn't been upstairs since her hip replacement, maybe she wanted to check in on it.

We had the funeral on Thursday, which is when I wrote up most of this. We've been staying in Mama Tickey's house and weren't informed that everyone else was gathering there as well to go over to the funeral parlor, which was mildly unpleasant when the family started showing up while we were still getting ready. Nothing like living somewhere that a bunch of strangers consider second-home to really strip you of any sense of safety or privacy.

The pastor at the funeral was nice; he's retired and only does funerals now, which seems like a horrible job to me but to each their own. The service was short, though a bit heavy on the whole eternal-life-through-Christ-Jesus thing. At one point the pastor said "We than you, Lord, that Mama Tickey is victorious over death" and I thought, well, if anyone's going to be victorious over death, Mama Tickey's got good odds.

Mum: Did you get a program?
Lucky: All the players and their stats.
Emmy: You can't tell the corpses from the caskets without a program...

Once the service was over we had coffee and talked while they prepared Mama Tickey for transit. I am, apparently, "Sam from Chicago" to every single person Mama Tickey ever knew. "Oh! Sam! From Chicago!" I think half of Houston was there. I now know a lot of Houstonians. Or at least am known to them.

By the way, I thought Mama Tickey was the last of the southern belles, but it turns out there are still a few around and they were ALL AT THE FUNERAL.

At any rate, eventually we piled into our cars, put on our flashers, joined up with the cops, and drove out to the gravesite. I'd never actually been to a graveside service. I found it was weird that we bothered to have one given they didn't lower her into the ground or anything, but it was nice to see her final site, and the casket, which had a pretty Eastern Star emblem on it.

"It was fine, but why did we do it?" was the theme of the entire process. Nobody seemed to want to do most of it. The rest seemed to have no point.

We had a lunch reception after the graveside service; Crazy Aunt M asked a friend of hers to bring over food, so we ended up with ham sandwiches and cheetos. Class all the way, you guys. (Two of the cousins spent the entire viewing on Wednesday night drinking beer in the parking lot; one of them showed up to the funeral proper with chaw in his mouth, and the other brought a twenty-four pack of Bud Lite to the lunch.)

And then they all stayed.

Forever.

Someone fell asleep in a chair; a couple of people sat around using their phones; one woman and her daughter sat on the couch for three hours, not eating, not speaking, and were in fact the last to leave. Lucky's brothers got into an intense discussion of aluminum decking. One of my cousins read a magazine.

It was insane. THE RECEPTION IS OVER. GO THE FUCK HOME.

I wouldn't have cared, but we didn't get to leave when we wanted because we were staying at the house. Plus Crazy Aunt M kept trying to rummage around for valuables. I had to herd her out of the guest room where I was staying, twice. I wouldn't so much have minded her going in there, it's not my house after all, but she could have asked first, or given me a chance to tidy it up a little.

I should have snuck the soul-eating clown into her bag as she left. (Sorry for the size of that image btw, I had no idea it would post so huge.)

The upshot is really that I don't want any of Mama Tickey's things. I saw her mostly outside of her house, so they have no real value for me; I don't even know which ones had value to her. Mum doesn't want any of them either, but she doesn't want Crazy Aunt M to "win", so she's a little crazy herself. She keeps pointing out things I might like, which I either don't have room for or don't want because they're useless.

I don't think Lucky cares one way or another. I don't honestly think anyone cares except Crazy Aunt M and Mum, and Mum only cares because Aunt M's neurosis is contagious.

I did get to meet the Other Favourite Grandchild at lunch. He's nice enough, and certainly a cut above the rest of the cousins, but we don't have much in common aside from a shared relief that we escaped Texas.

Me: Tired, kiddo?
Emmy: I feel kind of gritty. Like, on the inside. Of my head.
Me: I know the feeling.

We spent the early evening debating whether we should go out because we all wanted steaks, or stay in because none of us wanted to move. Steaks won, but as soon as we got home after steaks, we pretty much passed out in the living room.

And this morning we're at McDonalds, sipping hot cocoa and computing. Mum sincerely can't believe she can't get fries before 10:30. She's asked three times.

Comments

[lebannen.livejournal.com]

I've only been to rural funeral services, in the UK not the US, and there they do lower the casket by hand (you wouldn't be able to get a big digger/forklift/etc into one of those graveyards, for a start). At one, due to a shortage of people deemed suitable to assist (it's apparently usually a thing for male non-immediate relatives, and I am a girl but at least wasn't wearing a skirt or silly shoes) I got asked to help by taking the boards out from under the coffin before they lowered it. This turns out to be slight tricky, as what you don't really want to do (apart from dropping them down the hole, of course) is lift them too high so that they bang on the underside of the coffin, making it sound as though Aunt Ermintrude is making a final bid for freedom. Oops.

[marymac.livejournal.com]

And they do it whether it's really a good idea or not - what with the incredibly wet summer, when we buried my aunt the ground on the uphill side was not at all up to three grown men standing on it and my dad nearly went after her. He says it's very hard to maintain an appropriately dignified demeanour while lowering your sister to her eternal rest when the funeral director has a death grip on the back of your jacket to stop you from falling in the grave and you have a growing conviction that the deceased is laughing her head off somewhere.

[lebannen.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, seconded so much. In the case of my aunt everyone involved was very glad that she was a very little old lady, minimising the numbers who had to get anywhere near the edge, and I was taken to one side and told very quietly exactly where it was safest for me to stand.

As it was, her funeral was the one day of the year with snow on the ground (just enough to make a slope into a never-ending series of puddles, with slippery bits lurking for the unwary), and there were many mutterings that she had arranged it all so that she could laugh at us.

[marymac.livejournal.com]

And at least all the fiddling about to get it organised does allow someone to notice that you're putting the last of the great aunts in the wrong grave...