There’s nothing worse than saying goodbye to a family member, but at least my relatives usually leave a humor column behind.
When we lost Aunt Faye, I was just a little kid, but I remember the family having a hard time getting my grandmother in the funeral mood. Gram’s hobby was collecting fresh, young husbands and doing creative subtraction on her age. If you were smart, you just smiled and agreed that she had her first child at 4. (Stranger things have happened in our clan.) But Aunt Faye would whip out her calculator and offer to call Guinness with the new world record, so Gram never really liked her.
The day of the service, my other aunts all wore long, dark skirts, but not Gram. She picked out a festive red strapless for the occasion, sending the aunts scurrying for fashionable ways to disguise her.
Gram only stood about 4-foot-10, not counting her hair, which resembled a hairy Tower of Pisa. She was very hard to hide. Buried under piles of platinum tresses—all swirling skyward in a beehive last seen heading northwest—Gram had enough hair to clog every drain from here to Idaho.
Compared to Gram, Dolly Parton was bald. And that’s hardly where the comparisons end.
“Did you bring anything else to wear?” Aunt Harriet asked as she tried to fashion an emergency shawl from a blanket.
“What’s wrong with this?” Gram demanded.
“It’s a little too happy,” Aunt Barb whispered.
“I am happy. I’m not dead,” Gram said, spraying her hive in place.
Years later, when we lost my mom, nobody had to worry about the dress code. Mom just wanted to be cremated and displayed on her daughters’ mantels.
My mother’s rationale for what we called “Roast in Peace” was based on her deep spiritual conviction that nagging her kids to clean shouldn’t stop just because death did us part. She liked knowing we’d get to dust her in the afterlife.
But the cremation process was full of surprises, like when the funeral director told us Mom’s pacemaker would have to come out or she would explode. As the family sobbed uncontrollably, the mortician—a man with all the emotion of Sheetrock— consoled us by promising he’d give the device to a dog.
Veterinary hospitals can’t afford pacemakers unless they’re donated, he said. Although I don’t recall ever making the acquaintance of a dog with a pacemaker, we took his word for it. Mom would have liked that. And we liked knowing she wouldn’t detonate.
When it’s my turn, there should be lots of non-combustible options. Like everything else, funerals are going green. Give or take a few titanium replacement parts, let’s face it: we’re all recyclable.
Instead of grilling, maybe they’ll freeze-dry me with liquid nitrogen. Then, using intense sound waves to shatter my remains (anything on the kids’ iPods should work), they can use me as fertilizer.
It’s all very eco-friendly. Best of all, nobody has to dust me.
Jan A. Igoe is a writer and illustrator from Horry County whose mom was a huge fan of art and laughter. Jan's housekeeping is another story. Say hello at HumorMe@SCLiving.coop.