Thread:My1obsession/@comment-28482541-20170927030739

Hello! I just wanted to stop by and check in with you. I know you, your daughter, and granddaughter have been in my thoughts of late. I know just having a diagnosis can be somewhat of a relief and give you a path. I hope that they are beginning to feel a little better. I hope you are remembering to take care of yourself as well.

You had spoken about humor and how you all use it to cope. So do I. Actually, so does my whole family. Hmmmm, perhaps we are related, lol! Hehe! On that note I have to tell you the funeral story.

My grandmother was the Grand Dame Matriarch of our family. She kept everyone close and tight, even through 4th and 5th cousins. She was also my mother figure as my Mom was more like a sister due to mental illness, so she raised me and counted me as one of her children rather than grandchild. She traveled with me every month to go visiting family. We have a running joke in my family that you know it is us when everyone is talking and no one is listening. We also love humor and use it all the time, especially to cope.

Well, when she died, needless to say the grief was thick and heavy. You know how when someone dies you meet with the funeral home and plan the service and everything? Well, we did that. I think the poor fellow who came in the room was quite unprepared for us. Bottles of water and tissue not withstanding, a few tears, but mainly cracking one liners and tons of gut busting laughter. Nearly every question he asked from flowers to music elicited some story, one liner, or wise crack that set us off laughing. At one point, a fellow employee had to come in and ask us to quiet down as another family was trying to plan. When we finished planning, this fellow told us that was the most fun he had ever had planning a funeral.

Flash forward a few days to the actual funeral visitation. The home had several family rooms, a chapel, large lobby, large bathrooms, and a large kitchen/dining area. There were two other families there as well, but we had taken over. To this day I still feel bad that they had to experience us during such a time, as well as wondering just how nuts they must have thought we were. We are a large family and as I said she kept us close with all which makes us a massive family. We were crawling all over that funeral home. The family room, hallways, lobby, bathrooms, kitchen/dining, and even the terrace and parking lot. All of us talking, joking, and laughing. Did I mention that we also tend to be a loud bunch? Yeah, there’s that, lol!

It quickly became clear that a family room was not going to cut it, so they decided to move us to the large chapel. Bless their hearts, they tried to shoo us out of the room so they could move Grandmother, and thus us, to the chapel. It just did not work out that way. I remember one my uncles yelling my name and telling me to steady the flowers. Well, so I did. The ones on top of the casket. As my two uncles and three cousins proceeded to move Grandmother themselves with the funeral home director and his staff literally wringing their hands as we moved through the hallway toward the chapel with me steadying the flowers. I remember peeking into the other rooms as we passed. I was thinking and wishing that I was an actress in some blockbuster comedy. This couldn’t be real. But it was. And I was trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

After all this......we were still crawling all over the place. We also served up one heck of a meal as everyone had brought a homemade dish. Next to talking, joking, and laughing, eating is our next best forte! Even the eulogies were full of humor and laughter! All of this is, of course, exactly as my grandmother would have wanted having a most wicked sense of humor herself. She always said she wanted a party not a funeral. Well, she got one! That is not to say there weren’t tears, there were, but we got through them with loads of laughter and love.

So if you ever feel your humor at tough things may be making someone look at you like your nuts, just remember this story and know that you are not that nutty after all. Lol! 