at the funeral

The whole congregation was singing "How Great Thou Art," and I remember thinking that if God was so great, he wouldn't have left a first grader and her three year-old brother sitting in the front row of this church holding a their dead mother in a box. I still hate that song. What a stupid song to sing at a funeral. Daddy cried like a baby, my brother sat in Grandma's lap, while I balanced a red hymnal on my knees, flipping through the little program.

The program was supposed to sum up her life - where she was born, where she went to school, where she worked. But all the important parts were missing - - that she was a great roller skater, tennis player and painter, that she never lost at Chutes & Ladders, that she let us jump on her bed, and that she liked abba zabba candy bars the best.

Way to go Pastor Norm. Not only were your prayers a complete wash - you've reduced her life to the most boring paragraph imaginable. I spent the rest of the service staring him down. I think he got creeped out, because he moved to the other side of the sanctuary to finish his eulogy.

It was the first funeral I'd ever been to. And quite frankly - a pretty pathetic way to finish things off. There were crumbly sugar cookies and red kool aid at the reception, kids I didn't even know running through the hall. Every now and then I'd hear grownups laughing softly in a corner of the room, and I thought about throwing those crumbly cookies right in their stupid faces.

But I didn't.

Instead I sat alone, at an empty table in the middle of the room, and I watched her life end. As her friends slowly trickIed out of the hall, I watched her disappear forever.