It’s a weird time in my life right now. In exactly a week I will be hopping into my car with my dad to drive across this semi-great country of ours, fighting all sorts of weird leftover weather patterns from this winter, to go to Seattle in order to start a new life. I (still) have exactly nothing prepared for this trip. Still no apartment. No place to sleep, no stuff to put into an apartment, no clue as to what I’m doing. On top of that I still have nothing packed. My procrastinitis gene is kicking in nicely lately.

On top of that, today I went to probably one of the weirdest funerals I will ever have to go to. My grandma on my dad’s side passed away on Wednesday and so I got off work today to go with my family and pay last respects. The pastor who came to do the service was retired but knew Grandma from back in the day, so he seemed a good fit to do the honors. At first when he talked to all the immediate family in the sitting room he seemed like a good fit, calm, well spoken, and showing an experience that he has been doing this for a living for most of his life.

Unfortunately, or I guess fortunately depending on how you want to see it, he wasn’t quite so good once he got up in front of everyone. Sitting down he was fine, but he did mention he was suffering from vertigo before we entered the church. As the service started up he seemed OK, but then some of the stories he told us before started to blend into other ones, and didn’t make quite as much sense the second telling.

For example: In the sitting room he told us that this wasn’t a time to be sad, it was a time to grieve, and that there was a difference. He then went into how we were here to celebrate her life and remember her how she was, not is. In the church the story came out a little differently. This time he said that some of us were sad, and that some of us were here to grieve, and there was a difference. What that difference was, I’m not really sure, because he then went into a long tirade about how lawyers sucked and how his daughter was having problems of her own with a lawyer during (I’m guessing) divorce proceedings.

He went on and on about lawyers for a while, but before he finished what he was saying he stopped talking and just stood there. Then he yawned. And then he yawned again. Amen.

No one was really sure what was going on. My aunt Tiger used that opportunity to jump up and read some of the things the family remembered about my grandma. The poor guy didn’t even seem to know where he was at that point.

The whole thing was rather hilarious at that point. Everyone sat there, looking up in disbelief at what was happening. My other aunt, who was expected to be crying like a broken fire hydrant in the city in July was instead trying to hide her fits of laughter in the otherwise silent church. We all were. It was bizarre, like something out of a movie.

At least it gave everyone something to talk about once the service was over. Every once and a while you could see someone snickering with someone else, and you knew what it was they were talking about.