Funny Funerals

When I was growing up, somebody in my family was always dying. This was because my grandfather was one of 13 sublings, and every one of them lived long enough to marry and multiply. By the time I showed up there were so many first cousins and second cousins and cousins once-removed, it seemed like everyone in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island was a relative. Naturally there were the usual deaths caused by accidents and illness, and one case of starvation long before anorexia was a household word. Funerals were commonplace, but several stick out in my memory.

One was for my cousin Martin, who at 24 had finished his years in the service and was flying home in an Air Force jet when it crashed into a field. Naturally he was given a military funeral complete with a 21-gun salute. As each shot rang out, his mother, my aunt (whose name escapes me now but it might have been) Lucille, threw herself, literally, on the casket as it was being lowered into the ground. The uniformed soldiers gently lifted her off each time, and the gun would be fired again, and Aunt Lucille, or maybe it was Sylvia, would hurl herself back onto the casket and shout out her dead son's name like she just thought of it. I was about 16 at the time, and quite impressionable. I stood next to my father, who with each gunshot muttered under his breath, "Oy vay, here she goes again." By about the 15th gunshot, this became quite comical, and my father and I had to work hard to suppress our squeals. Just in case anyone wonders where I got my quirky sense of humor.

Uncle Manny, my father's older brother who I loved dearly even though he was a scoundrel with dubious business associates who fought with my father over money and allegedly once literally tore the shirt off his back--my father's not his own--was, of all things, a Boy Scout leader until the day he died. At his funeral service somewhere in Brooklyn, the family of mourners sat around while the rabbi tried to console us. Suddenly a troop of about a dozen middle-aged, pot-bellied, balding men dressed in the summer uniform of olive green shorts, each holding a flag and adorned with several merit badges and a neck bandana, marched into the tiny chapel and recited a litany of Boy Scout incantations, stunning everyone. It was a wild scene, and again, funny as hell.

But nothing could top my dear grandfather's funeral, at which the wrong body was laid out in the casket at the front of the funeral hall. Fortunately I caught this mistake when I peered in to say goodbye to him and he looked half his age, which was 78. Simultaneously I heard the screams from the next chapel: "Oy, Morty, you look so much older in death!" (Apparently we had Morty and they had Gramps.)

Moral of the story: When you bury your loved ones, double check they're really in there.