The Funeral
Mom died.
I’m a priest.
I have to bury her.
Generally, a funeral is an easy payday: a bit of incense, a bit of Latin, a little hocus pocus, change bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, and BOOM…done. Collect an envelope, preferably with cash in it; checks complicate life. Go to the wake, pray for the dead (and an open bar), go home.
Not this time. I had to do it like I meant it, and I did, sort of.
The problem with any funeral, aside from family, is that you have to stand in front of the casket for hours and tell each person that comes up to pay their respects how the person died. In Mom’s case, she had kidney failure, fell down the stairs in the house, coded twice, and died at the hospital. But I had to tell that same story over and over and over again. I often thought people should have a marquee over the casket instead of flowers, and the information about how a person died scrolls across like a chyron.
The line was out the fucking door, and I still had two hours to go. There I am, in my collar and jacket, sounding less like a priest and more like a human ditto mark.
That’s when it happened.
The Holy Spirit came to me and said, “Just lie, you’re a priest, you lie all the time. Shouldn’t be a heavy lift.”
“Lie about what?” I asked.
“Just start making shit up, tell a different story about how your mom died-she’s up with us anyway-so fuck how she died.”
“I can’t believe you’re encouraging me to lie.”
“Please, like you need any encouragement.”
I thought about it for a minute, then thought, “What do I have to lose? I’m bored to shit anyway.”
“Oh Father, we’re so sorry to hear about your mother. How did she die?”
“Thank you so much. They found her dead of a heart attack in bed with dad, naked.”
“Father Jim, so sorry for your loss. How did she die?”
“Thanks, I appreciate that. Dad told her there was something caught in the fireplace. He went up on a ladder, yelled down, asked her if she could see anything, she looked up the chimney, and a brick fell on her head. Dead. Instantly.”
“Father Jim, we were so shocked to hear about your mom. How did it happen?”
“Well, you know she kept cockatoos—”
“Really? We never knew that.”
“Oh yes, she loved them. One got out and perched up on the garage roof. She decided to get a ladder out of the garage and go up to get it-they really are quite tame. He was climbing back onto her hand when the neighbor’s cat jumped out of a tree, onto the roof, startled the bird, which flew at my mom, and she fell backward off the ladder. Died instantly.”
I was really starting to get into this, and I just kept making the stories more and more outlandish. People ate that shit up. I could hear the Holy Spirit cheering me on.
“Father Jim, words can’t express how sorry we are. How did she die?”
“Tragic, absolutely tragic. She had wanted to go on safari all her life. Finally, Dad relented, and they went on a guided tour. They were on the savannah somewhere, walking along a river, watching some elephants spray water. You know, Mom liked to take pictures. She was getting her camera out and moving closer to get a shot, waded out into the river, and a school of piranha attacked her. They managed to get her to shore, but she lost a leg and an arm. She bled out in the mud.”
I kept this up for nearly two hours, then my brother took over, and he went back to what actually happened. He was caught off guard when one of Mom’s friends said they had heard she fell off a ladder when her pet cockatoo startled her. Another mentioned the chimney brick, but the fucking piranha-which was pure inspiration- pushed him over the edge.
Wearing a forced smile, he walked over to me and whispered through gritted teeth, “What the fuck are you doing? Did you tell all these people different stories?”
I didn’t give a shit, “Yeah, I was bored.”
“I can’t fucking believe you did this, at our mother’s funeral!”
“Jesus, take one of your meds-she’s dead for Christ’s sake.”
“And you’re supposed to be the priest.”
“I know, I know, it should have been you. Trouble was you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants.” I got another “Atta boy!” from the Holy Spirit when I said that.
“Father, your sister Karen is up by the casket and quite upset—”
“Sorry bro, duty calls.” I never liked him anyway, asshole.
Finally, we got the casket into the ground, ashes to ashes, whatever. The wake was at an Italian restaurant downtown, and it was an open bar; after all, we were paying.
If you do a lot of funerals, you begin to notice the same people attend.
These are professionals.
They don’t know your dead mother, brother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle or grandparents from fucking Adam. They read the obit, go to the funeral, and then head to the wake for the free lunch. You know who they are because they’re the only ones who come with their own plastic take-out containers.
They’ll come by your table on their sixth trip to the buffet, paper plate collapsing on one side from the weight of mostaccioli and meatballs, give you a sad smile, grab a side of potato salad, and tell you they knew your deceased from some make-believe job in the past.
“Oh my God, Father, me and Kate”—her name was Elizabeth, I mean if you’re going to lie, at least get some of the facts right-“used to work over at Ballinger’s”-mom never worked a day in her life, dad owned his law firm-“I was her supervisor in the Men’s Department”-my guess was that mom hadn’t been in the “Men’s Department” in years.
I could be wrong, though. I’d check with Dad, but he’d been banging his secretary for the last two years. I only know because he came to confession during Lent and told me. I think he liked telling me, thought I couldn’t tell anyone, the confessional seal and that all that shit.
Fuck him.
I told Mom before she died. If she had been in the “Men’s Department” before, she damn sure wasn’t after that.
Idiot. Always was an ass.
Now it was my sister Karen’s turn to take a crack at me, and she’d had about six vodka and tonics too many. What was worse was that her pussy-whipped husband was standing by her side like some poodle on a leash. She was good looking, but if my brother couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, she had trouble crossing her legs.
Slurred speech. Typical.
“Shimmy, did you tell—” she swayed slightly—“tell lady... el-phant on roof... whew”—another wobble—“got shom with per-ran-ah on ladder poot-a-cock?”
Her husband tried to stand firm beside her, like a man bracing in a hurricane. Semi-defiantly, he asked, “Well? Did you do it—yes or no?” Fucking Perry Mason?
Did I? I didn’t even know what the fuck she said. Her lap dog asked me, “Does your father know what you’ve done?” This guy was killing me. He and my brother were attorneys, well, to be fair, they were Dad’s lackeys. Dad was a prick, but if you ever needed a good-and expensive-defense attorney, he was your man.
“Why don’t you send your wife up to the bar and she can tell him,” I said, “He’s the guy leaning over the counter in the Tom Ford suit, with his hand on his secretary’s ass. I’m sure he’d love to talk to Karen.” Dad hated her, not quite as much as me, but close. She hit him up for money all the time, but he cut her off when Mom died. Her and the Poodle lived in the hills outside of town, with their two asshole kids who picked their pronouns.
Dad’s still at the bar, hand still on his secretary’s ass, and the bitch is leaning into it. He’s almost 70, and the only thing hard on him is his credit card. “Jimmy, have a drink,” he says, eyes bright. “Go easy on the booze, Dad, you know it doesn’t mix well with Viagra.” My sister staggered to the bar with her Poodle and my brother.
I lit a Marlboro, the place was “No Smoking,” but for what this cost? Fuck them.
His secretary Lucy decided to defend him, “He doesn’t need Viagra,” she smiled, putting her arm around his waist, “he’s got me.”
And clap.
“Why would he?” I asked, “He’s got an American Express Platinum. That’s more than enough dick for you, isn’t it?”
How much harder does she want it?
“I can’t fucking believe you’re a priest”—now it starts—“and your father couldn’t either.”
Classy.
Pillow talk, no doubt.
“He once told me you were his biggest regret.”
“I’m not sure I was the biggest; the clap he got from you had to rate pretty high.” His doctor was a member of my parish. “
“I love hearing your confessions,” The Holy Spirit told me, “We all do, the Father, the Son, all of us. The angels get a room ready and take their halos off. The Blessed Virgin- and now your mom- tend bar. One of the archangels lights some incense. Then we all kick back waiting to hear what you did last week.”
“It could almost be a Netflix series,” he told me, “Better than the Pope’s Christmas Message.”
“What the fuck? You guys think it’s easy to be a priest. And come on? The Pope? The guy is past it.”
“Right? That’s why we listen to you.”
“You know, it should have been your brother.”
Jesus Christ, here we go again.
The person who seemed to be the most concerned about Lucy’s clap was the Poodle. He wasn’t quite the pussy-whipped, obsequious fool he pretended to be. He’d been shagging Lucy for months. There’s something endearing about that; father-in-law and son-in-law sharing the same piece of ass. Probably on alternate days. Who could blame the Poodle, though? He probably got tired of having sex with my drunk of a sister that was more like necrophilia.
Karen liked it on the rocks; Lucy liked it straight up and hard.
Clap was the gift that just kept giving, like the song at mass, “Pass It on.” I almost felt bad for the Poodle—almost, but not quite.
My brother, who stood there listening (original thought had never been his gift), waded in, put his hand on my dad’s expensively tanned and well-manicured hand, and said, “How’d you ever become a priest?” Dad reached down when he thought no one was looking and scratched his crotch. Lucy saw what he did, too—the gift that keeps giving.
Dad pulled his hand away from my brother, and to his everlasting credit, said to him, “I suspect he’s a better priest than you are an attorney,” and turned to me, “That’s not a compliment either.”
I told him, “I would never expect one from you.” Keep your expectations low. I looked at him, smiling, one hand around Lucy’s waist, as if she was some fucking gold cup he had just won. Perfect teeth, smile, well-tailored, expensive cologne, manicured, tanned, and an itchy crotch. Pass it on.
Another Marlboro. I wondered if there was anything new on PornHub.
The bill for the wake came, nearly 9k for fucking mostaccioli, over baked “Italian” chicken, dried out meatballs, warm potato salad, tasteless fucking boiled potatoes-with parsley, hot sausage (that wasn’t bad), bagged salad and reheated rolls.
Christ, we made better food at our Lenten Fish Fry.
Dad gave me an envelope with cash in it for doing the funeral- can you believe he paid for it? I took $1500 in cash, walked back to the kitchen, gave it to a guy doing dishes, and said, “Here, you guys go have a good time.”
Ashes to ashes.
Dust to fucking dust.