I accidentally went to a funeral today.
I didn’t mean to, it just happened. People were mulling about, outside the church next to my apartment building. I’ve grown accustomed to this, the groups of people standing around, chatting and blocking the sidewalk, the dozens of cars blocking both sides of the street and narrowing the typical two-lane road down to one lane as the left-most lanes, along the concrete island, become an extra row of parking. But this was unusual. This scene only plays out during the weekend, Sundays mostly but occasionally on Saturdays too. I don’t understand why only on some Saturdays but on those specific Saturdays, there are never as many cars as there always is on Sundays. I will admit I never paid too much attention to which Saturdays the groups descend upon the church, maybe it’s every first and third Saturday, but I honestly don’t know.
There were people here, the groups mulling about, yesterday, too. During the week, I’ve never seen this. But, I thought, maybe it’s similar to those random Saturdays that draw the crowds in too, that these two weekdays happen to be special days that require a visit to the church in afternoon. I wasn’t raised religious, quite the opposite really although now that I phrase it that way, I’m picturing being raised in some sort of weird anti-religious cult that is actually super religious but that’s is so far beside the point I’ll stop. The point being, I know Easter and Christmas, and that is the extent of my religious knowledge—well, Christian knowledge. The church next to my apartment building is some kind of Christian, maybe Baptist or Lutheran, I know not Catholic. But besides those two holidays, I know next to nothing about any of the special days for any religion.
When I saw the group yesterday when I got home after work, I didn’t think much of it. They weren’t in my way, as I approached the entrance to my building, but they did catch my attention, as it was an unusual time for the gathering to take place. That thought flittered away from my mind just as quickly as it entered. As soon as I got my key into the front door and crossed the threshold, I did not spend another second wondering about those people gathered outside.
But today I did. I was, again, walking back home but not from work as it was my day off. I had ventured out to eat lunch with a friend whom I haven’t seen much in the past few months because we’ve both been busy and this was the first week I actually had money to spare and I had been owing her for quite some time and felt it was finally time to repay her. As such, I was approaching my building from the other side and had to navigate my way through the throngs of people.
Or that was the plan. I tried to, but as soon as I got about halfway through the mass, it started moving. The people around me were gently guiding me into the church and when I crossed the first threshold, I honestly expected a bolt of lightning to appear from the sky and strike me down. But no such luck on my part, instead I continued being ushered and somehow, I still don’t honestly know, ended up in the pews, right in the middle of the row and about equidistant from the front and from the door behind me, the door to my freedom. There were people on both sides of me, going down to each end of the pews, and at least five pews both ahead of me and behind had people sitting in them. I felt trapped, but more so than anything else, I felt confused. It was only when the casket was brought in that I understood.
So now I understood what was going on, but the same cannot be said to the people around me. Whispered darted around the people closest to me and spread out in concentric circles until even the people sitting as far away from me as possible were stealing glances and looking my way. I stood out, I don’t know how but people could tell I didn’t belong there but no one was rude enough to outright ask how I knew the deceased but the daggers I was getting from some of the older women were enough to let me know that they knew that I knew that I didn’t belong there, but that they also didn’t know enough about me to be able to tell me to get out. I was thankful—to god? To satan? To cthulu?—that my wardrobe consists of blacks, greys, and neon colors and I was unknowingly smart enough to not include any flashy color in today’s outfit and has instead of opted for a simple black dress.
I sat there, I continued to sit there and ignore the glances and whispered remarks about my presence. I couldn’t very well just up and leave at that point, it had been too long and it would have caused even more of a disruption if I did just leave in the middle of the mass than if I continued to sit there and look ahead and try to look sad.
The man who died, the man’s whose funeral I had completely and unintentionally crashed, was a father, a husband, he worked for over 30 years as a garbage man and enjoyed fly fishing and once got arrested after accidentally trespassing and fishing on government land. That was the best fish he had ever had, the priest, minister, pastor said, and a round of heavy-hearted chuckles scattered around the church. The priest-minister-pastor continued on, talking more about how good the man was, how good of a father he was, how much he loved his wife and his parents, the hardships from his life that he managed to make it through and how they helped him to learn and be a better man, a better Christian.
These sermons, these summaries of the lives of the dead in our lives, they all sound the same. It’s as if there is a guide book floating around among all the funeral homes and religious centers that act on a mad-lib type system, where you can just fill in the person’s name, jobs, hobbies, family life and boom, down. There’s the eulogy, all neat and ordered and good, because everyone who dies is a good person and it is totally and completely unacceptable to point out a dead person’s faults even when you know that everyone listening to the eulogy also knows what a giant scum bag he was and how he was a degenerate gambler and how he had been arrested many more times than that one innocent time he trespassed to go fishing and oh boy was that the best fish he had ever had. There’s no mention of any of this, and you best watch you back if you even hint about what an actually not good person the deceased is because for some reason, in our culture, it’s more appropriate to forget all the wrongs that have transpired and all the bad qualities of the deceased, and try to force an imagine of a good man, a nice man, as if saying these things now, saying that he was an good human being will be enough to get him into whatever heaven you, he, the priest-minister-pastor believes in, and that somehow if you don’t acknowledge the bad and the wrongs, neither will whoever or whatever is responsible for deciding whether the deceased will be allowed into whatever idea of heaven the current person talking or thinking believe it.
This is all more socially acceptable than the truth. But I guess everything is more socially acceptable than crashing some poor man’s funeral and in your mind making him out to be a not-so-good human being for the sake of your writing.
