Funerals

 So last night, I got bad news about my family.

Hardly a surprise- I'm the substantial pup of the litter.  Our ages are 84, 81, 78, 74 and me at 64.

And at least the top three have big health problems.  Ranging from the inevitable to a poor ass doctor misprescribing a poor ass medicine.

Not my point here to rage against that.

I just keep thinking of that line from Desperadoes Waiting For A Train:

To me he's one of the heroes of this country,

so why's he all dressed up like those old men...

My brothers AREN'T that old.  They're in their 30's and 40s, drinking beer with Dad, playing goose-tricks on my brother in law, taking their kid brother on trips to the lake with their families.  Spending summers catching lightning bugs and having rhubarb leaf wars with their kids.

Dad's been gone for 42 years. Mom for 50 this summer.

One brother in law died the same month as my best friend and Scrappy Beagle.

I'm seeing myself not coping.

A long time back, some friends took me to a play that the husband's sister was in.  There was an 1890's funeral scene.  It just seemed like it was from a yellowed newspaper.  And that yellowed newspaper has a headline: You were forgotten even when the ink was fresh.

I have a comic about a cowboy who went to the future and came back.  He's jumping off a train about to be swallowed in an avalanche.  And we read his thoughts:

'The year after I came back, I married the girl of my dreams.  She died in child birth the next year.

My best friend Boom-Boom got his jaw busted boxing.  The drunken doctor that fixed him up never washed his hands, and he died of an infection a week later.

My daughter was 4 when she died of rubella.

Every one of their lives could have been saved in that future I went to.  And everyone on this train had been dust for a very long time in that future.'

Somehow, the two twist in my mind, with the end result being that I swore my best friends funeral was the LAST one I will go to.  Most people know this; I doubt they agree, but they know.

In our family, death comes in threes.  I fear the first domino to fall.  Because these people aren't what they are, but what they WERE. A funeral means they can't ever be that again.  Life means that they can't ever be that again.

And I just can't do the funerals. I despise the inevitability of the yellowed newspaper.

I hear Hawkeye Pierce: "Don't let the bastard win."

But I know the real bastard isn't death, but Satan.  I tried to plant the seed with my oldest brother.  I told him, "I won't preach.  This isn't between me and you, this is between you and God."

I told my niece, "It feels weird being 'the healthy' one!"  She replied, "Enjoy it while it lasts."

Okay, deep breath.  Beer in 90 minutes.  Time to go enjoy.