No Advertising at Funerals!!!

One would THINK that would be unwritten rule, wouldn't one? One would APPARENTLY be wrong. Holy shit!

I just got back from the funeral of one of my mom's best friends. My mom meaning Mom Katt (long story, yes I have more than one mom), whom died years ago.

Anyways, I was at the funeral of Bernice. And the pastor is from The Caring Place. Our local Salvation Army church place that seems to have attracted an inordinate amount of homeless people to Maple Ridge since it opened... but I digress.

He started out nicely. It was all going along well... when suddenly I realized that I sitting in a recruitment service. He starts going on about how his job is to turn others to God, and he goes on for about ten minutes about how to accept Jesus into your heart. Okay, now I know that I am intolerant of these things, so I do try to have patience. But even to me, it seemed to go on for a lot LOT longer than normally happens. THEN he starts launching into how he cares, and that's what they do at the Caring Place. I think that he actually saw my head snap to the right as I looked at Sam with wild wide Can You Fucking Believe This Shit eyes. There was only a handful of people there, so I'm sure that he couldnt' have missed it. He cut himself short and brought it back to Bernice. But I swear, he was just getting himself worked up into a passionate advertisement of that place.

THEN he tells us to bow our heads and pray for DENISE. I don't know who the hell DENISE is, but the funeral for Bernice was turning into a joke.

I felt incredibly sad for the family. The daughter, Shannon, is a tragedy of her own. She attempted suicide by hanging a few years back, and was successful enough to end her life as she knows it. She now lives in a rehabilitation centre, and has recently been able to get rid of her wheelchair and walker. She cannot talk with her mouth, but her eyes are very expressive.

A few of us stood and said some words. After all that was done, Shannon stood up. It was the most heartwrenching thing. She cannot speak, but you could hear the anguish in the silence.

Thanks for listening,

Dee