Yeah, that titling format got old quickly. Great news! I finished the cane culture piece for /ed, and I'll let you know when it runs. It was a fun one, and I hope that I am at the forefront of media coverage on the revival of walking sticks as a fashion must-have. You heard it here first!
You might be asking yourself - as I work full time, play husband and father, do my chores, beaver away at astrological compatability blurbs, play ATTACK! on Facebook (it's Risk! online! am I in heaven?) and pitch/land more pieces - what do I do in my spare time? Instead of beating you with a shovel, I am actually glad you asked.
Welcome to my updated blogroll:
NewsCBC EdmontonEdmonton JournalVue WeeklySee MagazineBlogsMacleans Blogs (especially Inkless Wells, Inside the Queensway and Scott Feschuk)
Daveberta (yes, a Liberal blog - in Alberta)
Idealistic Pragmatist (even stranger, an NDPer's blog - in Alberta)
Todd Babiak (I admire that he seems to support himself entirely with his pen - and he's published!)
PersonalWhat Would Tyler Durden Do? (funny, with a soupcon of offensiveness)
Cracked (yes, the venerable humour mag went online - and it's funny!)
College Humor (I have never visited the "Cute College Girl of the Day" section)
I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER (OK, I find lolcats strangely amusing at times...)
Gutenberg Project (This one is great: public domain books converted to text files for palm organizer or laptop reading - catch up on your Oz, Barsoom and Sherlock Holmes!)
Visit any of the above for more fun than french kissing a skunk!
Today, I decided to include another first of mine: my first cover piece. I pitched it after I attended the funeral of my cousin and groomsman, who I still miss. It turned out... interesting.
Not a mourning personBy CHRISTOPHER THRALL
“But tell me, what do you do for fun?... What do you find fulfilling? What gives you that special satisfaction?”
“I go to funerals.”
—Harold and Maude
A few weeks ago, I attended the funeral of my cousin, who died unexpectedly in his sleep at the age of 27. (Rest in peace, Mike.) From my seat near the front of the church, I listened to the service and took comfort in my family’s presence. I took in the words of those who knew him and the supplications to gather him up and keep him safe. Tears streamed freely, sobs were suppressed, tissues were wadded into sweaty palms and reassuring embraces were free to all. Even in my sorrow at the loss of such a dear man, I glanced around at heads bowed in prayer and marveled at the turnout.
Cars were parked blocks away and well-dressed mourners walked solemnly to the weekday afternoon service. Rows of chairs had to be set up behind the last pew to accommodate the attendees. People of all ages, from all walks of life, had come to share in the ceremony and say their final goodbyes. The receiving line for my aunt and uncle went on for an hour and a half. Even the interment in a rural cemetery south of Edmonton saw a circle of people four or five deep surrounding his grave. As I grieved, I considered the draw of this ritual for a man who had touched so many in his life. I witnessed how safe it was for naked expressions of sorrow, how those present radiated warmth and support for each other, even in the midst of their despair. I thought about how comforting this environment was, how inclusive it was to all that suffered. I realized how attractive all this could be for anyone wanting to feel emotions this intense. I caught myself wondering how many people at the funeral actually knew Mike, and whether or not anyone was crashing the service for some other reason.
Despite the taboo nature of the subject, the image of the funeral-crasher has long been part of popular culture. The titular characters in the 1971 cult movie Harold and Maude were funeral crashers brought together by their shared appreciation for these ceremonies. Douglas Coupland wrote about “Harolding” in his novel Polaroids From the Dead, in which teens obsessed with cemeteries loiter on the cusp between life and death. Two friends crash a service and accidentally topple a coffin in Clerks. I remember my own experiences taking gravestone rubbings in my youth. With my new appreciation for these havens of intense emotion, I began to understand Harold and his desire to share funeral experiences with people he didn’t know in honour of someone he had never met. I resolved to find him and ask him about it.
This task proved to be far more difficult than I thought. As a technophile, I rely on the Internet as a font of information on all that is bizarre—and I was more than a little surprised when Google failed to turn up any sort of hobbyist’s group for funeral crashers. (I had imagined sites where hot topics would include fashion tips, codes of conduct for different religious services and foolproof responses for inquisitive family members.) Research yielded a number of sites devoted to obsessions with cemeteries or death, some frighteningly factual and others downright creepy. I found a multitude of inadvertent or fictional funeral-crashing accounts, but no real reports from enthusiasts.
Conversations with funeral directors, officiates and caretakers earned me responses ranging from hostile to incredulous, but no insights. “We have the occasional problem with unwelcome family members of the deceased,” replied one director who asked not to be named. “But that’s the only example of crashing that comes to mind. You do hear about vandalism in the graveyards too.” An evening of desperately approaching random strangers in a city cemetery probably brought me close to being arrested, but still I found nobody who would admit to being there for fun. It was quickly becoming apparent that if I was going to gain any special insight into the world of funeral-crashing, I was going to have to do it myself.
The reactions to my project from friends and family drove me on. Especially among my peers, I triggered a wellspring of anger, outrage and disapproval for my actions, which were deemed clearly inappropriate. I found myself explaining at length what I was doing and why. Among older acquaintances with more funeral experience behind them, the idea was met with bemusement: why would I go if I didn’t know the person? In nearly every case, the listener became intrigued, and the storm of conflicting emotions I encountered kept me believing that I was on to something big.
I perused the obituaries for funerals, in particular those that promised to be large enough for me to blend in unobtrusively and that provided enough information on the deceased for me to build a plausible cover story. I planned to attend two funerals in a row that day, wearing the suit I was married in—the same suit I was wearing when I said goodbye to my cousin. I wore my glasses and tamed my normally mussed hair out of respect for these people I didn’t know. Nervous and agitated, I changed my mind about this ridiculously gruesome project about 15 times on the way to the first service.
I parked my ’93 Mazda hatchback among the conspicuously expensive vehicles in the funeral home’s parking lot. I passed through the tastefully furnished lobby, noting the excessive use of soothing pastels, and made my way to the service. Carefully avoiding the gazes of three men standing outside the doors, I entered and froze. The silence was broken only by quiet violin music coming in over the speakers and I felt like every eye was on me. I hunched over, scurried forward three or four rows, nipped in to the fifth chair and sat down—I made it! It didn’t take me long to realize, however, that nobody was paying me any mind. I heard sobs and murmurred conversation as I looked around.
The coffin was at the front of the room, one side open, with someone (I tried desperately not to see) barely visible over the rim. Dramatically framed by draperies, flower arrangements on pedestals and artificial candles, the polished dark wood casket with its silver carrying bar and erstwhile occupant brought to mind all of the brutal reality of this ritual, and my role in it as an outsider. Hot guilt pounded through my veins. My face was flushed, my breathing shallow and quick. I kept my head bowed: I couldn’t have met anyone’s eye even if I’d wanted to. I rehearsed my relationships with the deceased, just in case I was asked. I barely noticed more seats filling and missed the beginning of the service.
My attention only returned to the ceremony when friends and family were asked if they wanted to share memories of the deceased. An older man in my row got up immediately and his simple, honest words brought a lump to my throat. I listened to others share their memories, and could feel myself moved by their grief. I started to feel titillated by being somewhere I was definitely not supposed to be. My impostor’s guilt grew. Dreading the upcoming reception, I started to get angry: I was sharing in this moment of sorrow, genuinely moved by the stories that were being told. Why couldn’t I simply tell them what I was doing there? I wrestled with this question, more and more agitated, until the service ended and I bolted from the room with as much dignity as I could muster. It wasn’t one of my proudest moments.
My pulse was racing, and it took a few minutes of inattentive driving to calm the panic. What was I afraid of? Despite being the youngest one there by a couple of decades, no one had given me a second glance until I sprinted out of the home. I hadn’t run out on a bill or done anything illegal. Maybe this guilt-induced flight reflex was a funeral crasher’s rush? I resolved to do better next time and try—try—to stay for the reception afterwards.
I rehearsed my fictional relationship again as I parked in the huge church lot, which was less than a quarter full. Feeling a little less terrified than I had been at the first funeral, I made my way up to the front to pay my respects before finding a seat. I was more at ease this time, better able to examine the relaxed, slightly misshapen features of the careworn face in the casket as I waited my turn. I stood in front of the guest of honour with my head bowed, counted 20 hippopotami, then took my seat in a pew near the back. I had just discovered that I could make slight marks in the back of the pew with my thumbnail when I was relocated by the officiate, along with four others, to make a tighter group in the front half of the church. From the environment to the ceremony itself, everything about this funeral was more formal than the last. The soaring scale of the church and the solemn weight of the service threatened to overwhelm the fragile mortal grief around me.
Tears weren’t appropriate here. Open expressions of grief seemed out of place in sight of the stone-faced family members in the front most pews. Nonetheless—or perhaps for this very reason—I found it easier this time to engage myself in the sorrow around me. I took the time to read the small program, getting acquainted with this person for the first and last time. As the outsider, I could step back from the immediate loss felt by those around me, but could allow myself the full range of heartache that we repress so much in our society. Ultimately, I began to feel sympathy for the people around me who had lost this beloved soul. My heart went out to them, these mourners, and I mourned the loss of my cousin again.
This time, I stayed for the reception. I waited through the short line in the basement of the church to shake the hands of relatives, offering my sympathies. Asked three times how I knew the deceased, I rattled off my preconceived replies without a pause. My knees were shaking, but my cover story held. With the worst part over with, I grabbed a butter tart and sat down in relief, only to be immediately approached by another mourner. I answered his questions blithely enough, though he brushed aside my own queries with one-word replies. Alarm bells started to go off as he questioned me more closely. He knew I didn’t belong here. I was busted. Icy terror slammed into my spine and I began to look for an escape. But after calming down and listening for a second, I discovered that he simply didn’t speak English very well: his aggressive repetition was borne of a lack of comprehension, not of suspicion. I fled to the refreshment table for another tart. I welcomed a remark from a sprightly senior with a sparkly lapel pin and sat down with her. Gradually, conversations grew from twosomes to the entire group as the mourners started speaking of the deceased, sharing precious moments and treasured memories that almost always involved laughter. I avoided contributing by simply shaking my head whenever anyone looked at me; an hour later, I left the service, feeling good about being alive and richer for having shared a special time with exceptional people.
Obviously, intruding on funerals is wrong, much in the same way that stowing away on a railcar is wrong: in both cases, you’re hitching a ride to a destination without paying your way or even seeking permission. But still, there has always been a darkly romantic element to both that will never lose its appeal. In the same breath that our society marginalizes and sterilizes death, it glamourizes it with television dramas like Six Feet Under and Dead Like Me, leaving us conflicted and confused about how to feel when death comes for those we know. Funerals are safe environments for authentic displays of grief. They are for remembering someone dear to us, and for honouring their memory. They’re for saying goodbye. If you don’t know the person, you simply don’t belong there.
In the end, I came to understand, at least a little, why someone like Harold would crash funerals. Besides the demystification of death and the titillation of doing the forbidden, it comes down to finding a safe place to feel. When these sanctuaries are found, they should be treasured: safe places to expose our most intense inner emotions are few and far between. V
Labels: funeral crashing, links, vue weekly
