I hate funerals.
Well, that's not entirely accurate. I don't hate the actual burial itself, the placement of the casket into the ground. Nor do I detest a mausoleum placement ceremony where the urn holding the ashes of the departed is gently placed into its niche. Those are fine ceremonies with which I have no problem whatsoever. The parts of a funeral I hate, the parts I despise with a passion, are the actual memorial services themselves. I cannot stand all the talky parts that seem to accompany every damn funeral.
You know what I'm talking about. They have an emcee: a priest or rabbi or whatever religious officiant is hired to pretend to know the dead person they are speaking about. And that's not even the worst part. The worst part is when the emcee invites various people to deliver speeches about personal memories or some anecdotal story about the deceased that maybe is supposed to make you laugh or choke up with sadness, or maybe feel both at the same time. At least, that seems to be the intent. The problem is that most of those friends or relatives don't know shit about public speaking and, even if they do, they are choking up or sobbing themselves: they can barely get their words out of their mouths. Everyone in the audience coos in sympathy because
gosh it's so sad, isn't it? It's such a tragedy just how much they miss [insert relative's or friend's name here]!
Suddenly, it's all about
the speakers
rather than the dead person the service is supposed to be for. I hate that. It's the worst.
The worst of the worst is when the kids who are "voluntold" to speak about their departed close relative break down halfway through their speech. They can't continue; they run off the altar or stage, overwhelmed with loss and sobbing wildly. They run down the aisle into the foyer or whatever it is as the doors bang loudly behind them. When that happens, I'm not sad for the kid; I'm angry at the parents. What were those "loving" relatives thinking? You can't put that kind of pressure on a kid! Especially at a time like that.
Jesus!
When that happens I just want to go over to the parents and slap some sense into them. But of course I don't; I just sit there like everybody else waiting for the emcee to get the show back on track so we can finish talking about the dead person.
I have never--not even once--pushed anybody to speak at a funeral service. I even tried to dissuade my children when they asked to speak. Closure is one thing; I get that children need closure when a loved one dies. But unless they were mature enough to handle their grief while speaking publicly, I argued they should get their closure another way.
After all the talking is done, they serve mediocre once-hot buffet food like it's a cheap weekend cruise. Everybody stands around awkwardly, trying to say something other than "sorry for your loss" but, you know, there just isn't that much else to talk about at a memorial service. "How do you think the Dodgers are gonna do this year?" just doesn't really work for a conversation starter. As a result, I try to escape just as soon as socially acceptable, heading home so I can take off my black suit and black tie, and try to forget the departed so that I can move on with my life.
So, yeah, I hate the damn things.
*****
I came home from Carole's funeral service as quickly as I could get away, just as I did at every funeral. This one was no different from any other service, even though it was my wife's funeral. I poured myself a hefty glass of Bushmills Black Bush and savored the flavor as I thought about my next steps. Carole's twins--my two step-kids--wanted to come back to the house with me but I told them I needed some alone time. They nodded and I think they were relieved to give me some space. Even though we had known each other for more than a decade, we were never especially close. They were fully grown when Carole and I got married. I was their mom's second husband, Jacob--"just call me Jake." I lived with Carole, working as a manager at the local store of a well-known national home improvement retailer. Carole worked as a senior buyer for a national department store chain. Sarah and Sammy lived their own lives. Sarah lived about an hour away from us while Sammy lived in LA. We got together for holidays--sometimes--and that was about as much of a family as we were. I guess we had a "modern" 21
st
-century family dynamic. They both cried at Carole's service; there was no doubt they loved their mother and she loved them. But I was not really a part of whatever family feelings they shared with each other. I was the outsider who married their mother. That was okay with me; I didn't need, or want, to get too close to people.
Both Sarah and Sammy were in their early twenties when we got married. Now they were in that space between thirty and thirty-five when most people start to question their previous life choices, when they either accept the life they've made or else break out and go a little crazy trying to reinvent themselves.
Sarah was a stressed-out elementary school teacher. We all know how screwed-up the modern education system is; raise your kids on screens and then you get a parent/teacher conference with
gosh how strange it is that they can't sit still or focus in class!
I knew the system was wearing her down but she was still fighting to make a difference in the lives of her kids. I wasn't sure how long she would be able to keep fighting. Sarah was approaching thirty-five, still single. I knew she wasn't a lesbian; she had several boyfriends of varying durations but nothing ever seemed to be serious. I hoped she would get her life together soon.
Sammy was a lawyer in a big firm, but I was pretty sure he hated practicing law and yearned for something less structured that involved more creativity. I knew writing legal briefs was not exactly a fulfilling creative outlet. When he wasn't lawyering, he was involved in amateur theater productions. I knew he had a few scripts he was working on; if he couldn't be an actor then he wanted to be a playwright. That was where his true passion was. He just practiced law to put a roof over his head. Like Sarah, Sammy was single. He might be gay but he had never outed himself; neither Carole nor I ever pushed him on the subject. Right now, his life could be described as "attorney by day, dramaturge by night." Which was fine, as far as it went. Like Sarah, I hoped he would make a new life for himself, one where he could follow his passion instead of chasing a salary.
Well, they each were soon going to have a chance to follow their passions because they wouldn't need to worry about money when they received their inheritance via the family trust. In addition to making them Trustees of the Trust--which was substantial even before the equity in our house was counted--there was also a pre-nup that guaranteed the funds Carole had brought to our marriage from her divorce would go to them on her death. Their financial futures were set. There should be no need to argue about money, which was a good thing. I've seen dozens of families break-up while fighting about inheritances. Somebody dies, everybody else yells "free death money," and then greed takes over.
Love. Death. Greed. It is an endless cycle and I was glad Carole's kids were going to avoid all that nasty mess. It was all going to them. I didn't need, nor did I desire, anything more than I already had before I married Carole. I was sufficiently well-off before Carole and, now, more than decade later, I was still sufficiently well-off even without the Trust assets that we had nurtured together during our marriage. I smiled as I quickly signed the already-prepared documents that announced my resignation as Trustee while also disclaiming any rights as Beneficiary. I signed the quit-claim on the house. Everything in the Trust--every single dollar--would go to Sarah and Sammy. Fifty/fifty, an even split of double-digit millions of dollars. Wouldn't they be surprised! I wondered what they would do with their new-found wealth. I shrugged slightly: not my problem. Not anymore.
I sighed at what the bathroom mirror showed me. My hair and beard were completely gray now. At least my body was trim. I worked hard to keep it that way. Carole had always smirked at my fitness obsession. "My gray-haired gym rat," she called me. She was overweight for most of our marriage but I never cared about that. She was fun to be with; she laughed at my jokes and we laughed together at the antics of the world around us. Besides, as the cancer grew and chemo became a way of life, she lost weight quickly. By the end, we both wished she still had those extra pounds on her emaciated frame.
