Funeral Crashers
“If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there’s not much else that can really get to you.”
Christian Bale
When I was twenty-four, eating breakfast and reading the paper one Saturday morning, I noticed an obituary about a guy who made it to one hundred years old. He was an immigrant, a veteran, and had lived an exemplary life. It was such a nice obituary, as far as obituaries go. When I realized that the funeral was in a couple of hours and a mile away, having nothing else to do that morning, I decided I would go.
The funeral was at a Greek Orthodox church, and what an impressive building it was. Though, walking up the steps, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What am I thinking, going to a total stranger’s funeral, where I know absolutely no one?”
Upon entering, I immediately ran into a girl I had briefly met on a ski trip two weeks before, who did not like me then and liked me less now, getting a second look at me. I was interested in her on the trip, and naturally, I thought this might be my second chance. She was accompanied by her mother, who I had also met during the trip.
The girl was quite startled to see me, and as it turned out, this was her grandfather’s funeral. She asked me pointedly how I knew him and what I was doing there.
I was so shocked to see them that I could only think of the obituary, and how it mentioned that the grandfather had been involved in the community gardens nearby. Grasping at straws, I said I had met him a couple of times there. I was certain that if I had told them the actual harmless truth, they would have recoiled in horror.
The mother’s initial impression of me, as a potential suitor for her daughter, was boosted tremendously, now that I was dressed in a suit and revealed as a friend of her father.
But, over the course of an hour, being a person of integrity, mostly, and feeling terrifically guilty, I eventually admitted the truth, which inexplicably seemed to increase the mother’s interest in me. Ah… she was a trooper! The daughter’s interest in me was also deeply affected by this revelation, though not in the same direction.
It really is amazing what can happen over the course of a few short hours. And, I have to say, it was a nice service.
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