I’ve never done any funerals where the “honored guest” got up and walked out, or where the wrong person was discovered to be in the casket, or such foolishness as that. And for good reason.
Funerals are highly structured affairs, regulated by state law and overseen by a whole battery of employees and family members.
When we gather at the funeral home, the family has already been in conference with the mortician on how they want things done. The funeral directors stand nearby to make sure all goes according to plan. As a result, there is usually very little wiggle room there, space for the unexpected to occur.
And that’s not all bad.
I did this one funeral…
Where the man and his grandfather were buried together. The man was 34 and the grandfather was 64. If the numbers don’t work for you, consider that the grandpa had died a full decade earlier but the family had not held a funeral. When the grandson was found in his freezer with an axe in his head–put there by his wife’s lesbian lover–the family wanted a joint funeral for both. The two women are serving life terms in the state penitentiary.
And the first time I held a funeral in one of New Orleans’ above-ground cemeteries….
The day before the funeral, the daughter-in-law said, “Now, pastor, tomorrow when we bury Roy’s mother…” Yes? “My mother will also be in the casket with her.” I said, “Excuse me?” She said, “We cremated my mother some ten years ago and we haven’t known what to do with the ashes. We found out that it’s legal, so just before the casket is sealed, we’re going to slip the urn inside it and put both their names on the marble slab.”
She got a little gleam in her eye and said, “Just think–my mother and my mother-in-law in the same casket.” I said, “Did they get along together in life?” She said, “It really doesn’t matter, does it?”