<p>After reading the thread about horrible MILs…and some mentions of funerals, I thought that a thread about odd things seen/heard at funerals would be interesting.</p>
<p>The oddest thing that I’ve ever seen at a funeral was…</p>
<p>At my FIL’s gravesite, we were all standing in a circle around the grave. Each of H’s siblings said a few words. Some made comments about how “dad” had been difficult, but he had softened a bit (only a little bit) with age. When it was my MIL’s turn, she said, “Now I can finally say what I want. Oh, and, now I have more closet space.” </p>
<p>I was at a wake once and while standing right next to the open casket in front of a very packed funeral parlor paying respects and saying a prayer a cell phone I was carrying that I forgot to turn off started blaring really loud 'La Cucucaracha" song ring tone. It wasn’t my phone, I was carrying it for someone else, and I didn’t know how to turn it off…it kept playing 'La Cucaracha all the while as I walked out of funeral parlor with what seemed like everyone’s eyeballs and ears tuned in on me. I came close to putting the phone under my foot and smashing it. Even the deceased soul in the casket, I could swear his one eye squinted open a little bit to see what was going on. I felt about 1" tall.</p>
<p>These are second hand (didn’t experience them personally) but H is clergy and has heard these from other clergy friends.</p>
<p>At one funeral for a gentleman who wasn’t particularly well-liked, the officiant asked if anyone wanted to say a few words about the deceased. After a long, long silence, someone finally offered “he was always punctual.” That was the only comment offered. </p>
<p>Another clergy friend’s church was next door to a KFC. The church’s new wireless mic/system kept picking up the KFC’s drive-thru audio during a funeral.</p>
<p>Just as it was being lowered, my FIL wanted to open my MIL’s casket to make sure she was actually in there. Not sure where else he expected her to be. Fortunately for the rest of us, the guy with the “key” they use to lock the caskets had left already.</p>
<p>One of the funniest things my friend told me at her daughter’s fiance’s grandma’s visitation. The family decided to have a family portrait with gran in the casket. The fiance was horrified (as I would have been) at the idea and said he wasn’t sure how to pose for it - two thumbs up, two thumbs down, one up, one down? </p>
<p>I do not want an open casket and viewing. Ugh.</p>
<p>My husband’s grandmother’s funeral. H’s cousin, a professor at a Midwestern university with a small child, was one of those making a little speech about the grandmother. It was entirely appropriate until the end when he said, “Oh, and one more thing. Zoe (his child) can now go pee pee on the potty.” As if anyone cared or that this was the time.</p>
<p>The preschool aged granddaughter of the deceased started turning cartwheels during the funeral. Lightened everyone’s heart a bit. The deceased grandfather would have loved it.</p>
<p>Another preschool aged granddaughter noted the lines of friends of family speaking to the elderly widow (her grandmother). She stood next to her grandmother and started greeting people by saying the most sophisticated phrase she knew: “Bon Appetit!”</p>
<p>When I was a teenager my godmother’s husband died. After the funeral we had the close family back to our house. I ended up in the basement with his grandchild, where, for some unknown reason, we decided to play “Murder in the Dark”. My poor godmother came downstairs, to find all of her beloved grandchildren lying on the floor pretended to be murdered.</p>
<p>My mother was late for her own funeral. My dad always told her she would be-and she was, for reasons we never did learn from the funeral director. It was beyond fitting.</p>
<p>When my father died, my then 3-yo insisted we put a box of his favorite cookies (her favorite too) in his casket. So we did. It made my mother smile.</p>
<p>When my mother died, my kids and their cousins were all young teens or tweens. We’d all gone back to my sister’s to visit, since we had relatives in from other states, but everyone but these few cousins were adults. They got bored so they decided to highlight my S’s hair. It was the fashion about 15 years ago for boys to have super blond tips. Because my mother was a fun-loving person, even HER mother got into the operation-we have pictures of S sitting there with three girls carefully working on him. I’m glad we did it, because by age 17 he was already losing his hair, about the same as his father and both grandfathers. At least he had fun with it while he had it!</p>
<p>At my mother’s wake, we asked that the funeral home play music by her favorite artist, a man she’d met many times. People we hadn’t seen in decades came to tell us they knew just where to go by following the music.</p>
<p>I know these aren’t really odd but I’m guessing they’re not too common.</p>
<p>My dad used to always joke that he wanted a taxidermist to stuff him and stand him up in a corner at his wake so he wouldn’t miss the party. >>>>>>>>></p>
<p>OMG! My post was going to be about seeing the online story about the family in Puerto Rico standing the corpse in the corner for the wake. With pics. It was…well, horrifying.</p>
<p>sseamom-if it wouldn’t anger my sister, I would find it fitting if my own mom is late for hers. We had to set the clocks at all different times just to get her close. That made me smile. </p>
<p>I once went to a visitation where the sister of the deceased didn’t like the shade of lipstick he now deceased sister was wearing so she wiped it off and put on a different shade from her purse. Knowing the deceased, she wouldn’t have wanted to be buried in the original awful shade but maybe halfway through the wake was probably not the time.</p>
<p>As a 19 year old, I attended the funeral of my high school best friend’s father. We had a falling out when we were 17, so I had not seen or spoken to her in a couple of years. I believe this was my first funeral so I was a bit nervous, not knowing what to say to the family. I when up to my ex friend and said, “I saw your cousin last week.” Don’t know why I said that or if I offered my condolences, but I hear later from mutual friends that she thought I was a complete idiot. At the time I was hurt, but as I matured in later years, I realized how stupid I must have sounded.</p>
<p>That all said, my children knew how to handle themselves at a young age; they learned from my mistakes!!</p>
<p>"We had to set the clocks at all different times just to get her close. That made me smile. "</p>
<p>LOL-We did the same thing! And what’s more, my mom collected weird clocks, like the one with not face, the one with the numbers going backwards and the one with all the numbers in a jumbled pile on the bottom. No one visiting her ever knew what time it was. </p>
<p>My older D is exactly like my mom when it comes to time. If a day passes that she isn’t screaming out the door to catch the bus, it’s because she’s sick.</p>
<p>My grandmother was the type to always have Tic-Tacs, breath mints, etc. on her. My uncle (who is not “all there”) took them from her bedside table after she died, and walked around offering us “mom’s breath mints” at the funeral.</p>
<p>My father-in-law did not have his false teeth in his mouth when he died at home…thus, nor did the mortuary when they placed grandpa in his casket. My sweet
mother-in-law realized he did not have his teeth. She just knew he could not be buried without them, so moments before the graveside service she had my husband deliver them, wrapped in a Kleenex to the funeral director with grandma’s wishes.
I assume they made it in the casket…but I am pretty sure their final resting place was not his mouth!</p>
Yeah, me neither. I hate when someone says how good the deceased looks. No, they don’t look good, they look dead. </p>
<p>Was at the wake of a Puerto Rican woman (which lasted 7 hours), wandered into the main room at a bad moment and got stuck sitting through a very emotive 30 minute responsorial rendering of the Rosary in Spanish.</p>
<p>At my sister’s wedding, which was held in our living room, our Great-Uncle Arthur (late 80s; not all there) was talking as the bride walked down the aisle. My mother reached over, patted him on the arm, and politely said, “Shhh! Quiet, Uncle Arthur!” </p>
<p>Uncle Arthur retorts, LOUDLY, “What is this, a g0dd@mn funeral??!”</p>
<p>My husband went to the funeral of a friend’s mother. She had been cremated, and at the mausoleum, they discovered that the box containing her remains didn’t fit in the vault! They tried several different ways, ran out to their trucks (they were mostly tradesmen) to get tools, and finally put her in at an angle. Some people videoed it, and everyone including the son couldn’t help but laugh.</p>
<p>At my mom’s wake, nobody was wearing a watch, so when someone asked what time it was, my son checked my mother’s watch in the casket. She was buried with an Elvis doll, because she was such a fan.</p>
<p>Also, at my mother’s gravesite, one of her neighbors came up to me, AS THE CASKET WAS BEING LOWERED and asked if he could have my mother’s ukelele. I was so tempted to tell him that we buried her with it!</p>
<p>My maternal grandfather died when I was very young and I have no memories of him but my mom used to always tell this story.</p>
<p>Apparently at his visitation an older woman walked in off the street. She asked my mom if she was a daughter and my mom said yes. At that point the lady replied, “Well I never knew your father but certainly makes a lovely corpse.”</p>