I posted this under 'Elders Gems', but it's actually a service story!There were five of us sisters in a car group, my mother, aunt, friend, fellow pioneer, and myself. The pioneer sister, had a sister in another hall that had asked us to stop by this funeral home to visit the relatives of an older sister who had just died. This older sister had just moved to the area, and the family was from out of town, and she thought it would be nice for us to visit. Well, we were of course overjoyed for a break in the service monotony!
We go to the funeral parlor, with only the name of the deceased. We told the girl why we were there, well she was a bit dingy and takes us into this room. We walk in expecting to see a waiting room, with the family. Well it was the room with the dead sister. Had only ever seen one dead body, and was not prepared that day for seeing another one. The deceased sister was a 96 year old black woman in a beautiful suit. I was freaked out to say the least. My mom was looking at her and said, “she looks really good for being 96’, to which I responded, “she looks pretty good for BEING DEAD!”.
Well there we are in the room, the other sister signs the guest book, but we don’t know what to do. Do we stay do we leave, was the girl getting the family, what to do. Well we are your typical bunch of sisters, when we’re in an awkward situation what do we do, We get the giggles, really bad. We started laughing so bad because it was such an odd situation. Well at this point the girl comes back in and is rather distraught (we’re biting our lips to keep our composure). She said, “UM are you, I mean um, only fa..are you family, because only families supposed to be here?” Well let me tell you that was truly on of the greatest acts of self control I have ever exhibited. I was crying at this point trying to keep the laughing under wraps, so of course we looked like a very grieving group. We all just filed out, got in the car, and then we lost it, we laughed hysterically for 10 min at least, we were all crying. I mean it was bad enough then she asks the five of us (all white) if we’re family. Ohhh, we laughed about that for weeks.
Venice