Death in Real Life

Queen Sarah is surrounded by death all the time. She faces it from every side possible. I haven't had to deal with it nearly as much.

About an hour ago my sisters, Bubba, and I piled into the Optima and started the trek to Rockford. My great aunt passed away and we're on our way to her funeral. I don't like funerals. Who does really? The first and only funeral I've been to was my dad's and I didn't want to go to that one either.

I never had much of a relationship with my mom's family and maybe saw my great aunt a few times. She was very reserved and my brother and I were little so we were a bit loud and rambunctious. She would have seemed standoff-ish if we weren't so annoying. Her husband (my mom's uncle) was one of the coolest people in my childhood. He was like twelve feet tall with this big smile that you could see for miles. After a while we just stopped visiting the family in Rockford. Nothing dramatic had happened, we just couldn't afford the summer trips anymore.

Funerals don't make sense to me. I never understood them or why people are forced to go to them.

One, the deceased person isn't really there. I had to sit in the same room for two hours with people I'd never seen before crying over my dad's corpse. Now I go back and forth on the whole afterlife thing as I am undecided on any higher power being out there judging who deserves to go where. Why are we so lucky as a species to have the privilege of "heaven" or the disappointment of "hell"? I digress. Sort of. While watching the unknown people file in to "pay their respects", I recognized a few people who my dad actually openly dispised. He'd never been one to hold his tongue about anything - as soon as he was out of earshot of said person. One of these people, a woman who frequents the church circuit in Okeechobee, actually took pictures of my dad's dead body. What in the bloody hell.... why? She actually sent them to me on Facebook like I could put them in my keepsakes scrapbook or something. If my dad were really there he would have been disgusted. Well, he wanted to be cremated so he would have been horrified that his beautified carcass was splayed out for everyone to gawk at anyway.

Two, paying your respects. What does that even mean? To who? The dead guy? The family of the dead guy? I feel like we should be taking some sort of offering to Anubis or something. The main thing about "paying respects" that I don't understand is if I didn't see the person while they were alive, no contact at all, why would me showing up after they've died show my "respect"? People showed up at my dad's very unwanted funeral that kept saying how sorry they were for my loss. It didn't change anything. It didn't make me feel better. It didn't bring my dad back. It meant nothing, just empty words that had clearly been spoken a hundred times before.

I made the decision after my dad's funeral to never go to another one. I was forced to go to this one by my sister. Funerals are like second nature to her and that's super weird to me. Dress up in your black mourning outfit, shlop make-up on and pay your respects. To the deceased who may or may not be watching the circus below (or above, depending). To the family who barely notice your attendance.

Maybe I don't believe in a higher power or an afterlife. I like to think my dad's still around so I can talk to him or complain to him, but sometimes I'm sure he's not. He could easily be the cause of my spiritual dilemma. The existence of heaven and hell were hammered into us for so long that I just can't bring myself to make a clear decision. Perhaps it's out of spite or genuine indifference, I may never know. The idea of the funeral is just to make sure they're truly gone and we're not burying them alive. How morbid is that? I'm going to a Catholic version of the Serpent and the Rainbow.