Forgotten Beatitudes

• Emotions are high enough already.  Don’t push it.
• If I know the minister is divorced, has a son named Wes and took a trip to Israel where they went on a five mile hike through the valley on which the 23rd Psalm was based and, at one point, had to be rescued by that son Wes because the trail petered out and for some reason she just couldn’t turn around…then I know too much about someone who is not the guest of honor.
• Telling the above story about your still living son to a parent who’s son is dead isn’t gloating…it’s preaching…provided you tell it from the pulpit.
• Real life mortician make-up jobs are not as good as on Six Feet Under; if the best thing I can say about the deceased is that it sure looks like he could lip-sync the hell out of “It’s Raining Men” on the next season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, then it may be time to stop letting Queen Elizabeth apply the makeup to the dead people.
• It is inappropriate to get excited when one hears the opening strains of the theme to this movie on the chapel piano:

• It is even more inappropriate to lean over to one’s mother and excitedly whisper, ‘OMGOMGOMG, IT’S THE FUCKING THEME FROM TRON!’
• It is perhaps a sure ticket to hell that, upon realizing that it was indeed not the anthem from Tron being played but some squirrelly piece of piano-based crap, one is more disappointed than when one found out the guest of honor was dead.
• However, deciding right then and there that at YOUR funeral you damn well WILL have the Tron theme played is made of win.
• You will also have the following songs played at your funeral:

• Geeking out about your own funeral play list at someone else’s funeral…again, hot ticket straight to hell.
• Diamond Rio is NEVER an appropriate funeral music choice.  Never.
• If you ever write poems that are featured on the back cover of funeral programs, you have failed as a poet.  I’m looking dead square at you, Mary Dow Brine.
• It is inappropriate for the minister to critique the deceased’s choice of music at the service as “weird, but it’s what he wanted, so we’ll sing it”.  That is the provenance of blogs.   However, this choice is indeed hilariously inappropriate:

Awkward.  Although, perhaps not as inappropriate as this choice for the funeral of a man who died of lung cancer

• Squishy graveyards make one think….
• Jeans are now appropriate funeral wear.
• If you are lacking the majority of your teeth, travel in a personal cloud of cigarette smoke like some nicotine-spewing Pig Pen character and feel it’s appropriate to wear jeans and a Raider’s windbreaker to a funeral, chances are you are not important enough to also have a Bluetooth phone dongle sticking out of your ear for the whole funeral event.
• If you are related to the above person…learn to live with lowered expectations.
• It is inappropriate to join the funeral procession just to run lights.
• It is equally inappropriate for the funeral procession to wind down the main commercial street in town on the afternoon of the last full shopping day before Christmas.
• Having to drive through a Catholic cemetery to get to an apparently non-Catholic cemetery is meaningful in some unspecified way.
• Graveyards confuse GPS systems.
• Red Lobster always sounds like a better idea than it ever actually ends up being.