It Must Have Smelled Like He Was Dancing With Shamu

     There is a sucker born every minute and when I was born, they probably said, "That one counts as two."

     I've had some unique encounters in the past two weeks that I thought I would share with you.

     It all started two weeks ago when one of my sisters-in-law asked me to make a slide show for the family of an aunt who was in hospice care. Unfortunately, the doctors had done all they could for the aunt and the family was making funeral preparations. They wanted a ten minute slide show for the funeral luncheon, a twenty minute one to show people who stopped by the house, and a thousand slide presentation for each family member as a keepsake.

     Two weeks ago was before I made my pledge to start saying "No" when asked for favors. I probably would have still said no since this sister-in law is one of the worst for only calling when in need, but she was calling on behalf of a cousin who has been not only a good relative, but also a great friend, so I was happy to do it for him and his siblings.

     They had scanned the slides, but hadn't put them in any order, so I had to guess at the chronological placement. They had songs they liked, but only knew where to find them on youtube, not for purchase. They had artists they liked, but left it up to me to pick which songs (not a responsibility I wanted for someone else's funeral).

     I put together the ten minute show, spent a couple hours finding places to buy the particular songs they requested, then a couple more hours adding transitions, putting together a final slide with an appropriate quote, and getting it all to end at the precise same second. The cousin who was approving my work isn't tech savvy at all and she lives a couple hours away, so I uploaded the video to my youtube channel (which I only have to support other people's videos) and sent her the link. I figured she would watch it, tell me what she wanted changed and then I would take it down. Since I don't have anything else on the page, the chances that anyone else would see it were minimal.

     She watched it, liked it, and didn't want anything changed. I went to work on the twenty minute one and forgot about taking the one off youtube. A couple of days later, I got an email saying that a comment had been left on my channel. I checked and someone had left a "Woo hoo!" under the memorial tribute. Not only that, but there had been sixty-nine views. Huh?

     When I asked around, I found out that the cousin I sent the link to had forwarded it to her siblings to get their input and some of them had pasted it to their Facebook pages. A memorial video for their mother who hadn't passed away yet. Again-huh?

     Unfortunately, a week later, their mother did pass, and I was contacted because they decided they weren't comfortable with the second song. They wanted something else, but didn't know what, and could I pick something and change it. Seriously? Raise your hand if you want to be responsible for picking a song for someone else's mother's funeral with zero guidance as to why the last song wasn't what they wanted? Anyone? Anyone?

     After many hours of searching and stressing, I picked an instrumental of "Time To Say Goodbye" that was lovely. I had to spend more hours fitting it in to the video since it wasn't the same length as the original song, but I finished it late the night before the funeral.

     Herbie and I attended the funeral the next day. At the luncheon, we sat at a table with seven members of his family. It was a sad day and especially hard to watch the family saying goodbye to their mother and grandmother, but there were distractions to take our mind off the grief.

     One of Herbie's brothers ate his whole salad with his hands even though there were three forks next to his plate. His wife refused to eat anything, just allowing the waitstaff to put it in front of her and then take it away again untouched. She never eats at public places unless there are five stars next to the restaurant's name, but she never tells the waitstaff no thank you either. She just lets them serve it and then throw it away. Mind-boggling. Two others were displeased with the chicken entree the family had decided to serve and told the server to bring them a pasta dish instead. They aren't vegetarians. They just wanted something better than the chicken dish. Did I accidentally stumble into a food tasting instead of a funeral luncheon?

     The fussy eater spent the whole luncheon trying to get the manager to come to the table because the server had dripped a couple of drops of something on her scarf. I'm not sure if she was trying to get a new scarf or just dry-cleaning out of the deal. I had to look away. I once went to a fancy dinner/dance with my hair in an up-do and wearing a black lace gown. Someone bumped the waiter and a full plate of flounder stuffed with crabmeat fell on my head. I smelled like the docks for the rest of the night, and had clumps of fish peeking out of the lace, but I never asked for something free in exchange. Accidents happen and I don't want some poor waiter or waitress getting fired or docked pay over something so insignificant. Besides, it's hard to share it as a funny story later on if the punchline is, "And so they fired the guy."

     But my favorite was the sister-in-law at our table who made the original request for me to do the slideshow. She spent ten minutes telling me what religious shrines to visit on an upcoming trip, where to attend Mass, where to find the second largest collection of religious relics, etc. and then asked her niece to pass her the salad sitting at the empty seat next to me. Not, "Does anyone else want that salad?" but "Hand me that salad." I commented that more people had shown up than the family expected and people were still trying to find seats, so maybe we should leave the salad until we knew if someone was going to be sitting there for the meal. To which she displayed her holiness by answering, "Well, if someone comes, we'll just tell them there wasn't any salad." And she ate it. But she said grace first, so it's all good.

     Once everyone had finished eating, family members of the deceased got up and said a few words and then it was time for the part I was dreading--the slideshow. What if they hated the song I'd chosen? What if it had some meaning for them that I wasn't aware of and it made things worse? All those hours I'd spent agonizing over finding the perfect song and fitting it into the show and they could hate it!

     Not to worry. They forgot to turn the volume up and no one heard a note of the songs I'd spent so much time working into the memorial. I wasn't going to leap from my seat like a Hollywood director and yell, "CUT! Start the pictures of the deceased over again and this time cue the sentimental music!" I just quietly gathered my things and slipped out the door.

     Experiencing that is going to make it so much easier to keep my vow to say no when asked for favors. I'll just make myself remember sitting in front of my laptop at four a.m. listening to the Itunes hotlist for funerals, desperate to find the right song.

     In my next post, I'll tell you what was going on with my side of the family in the middle of all this. As one of my daughters says, "I see this stuff, and I still don't believe it."