Neanderpundit

there are more than a few purpose built funeral parlors, but in this town, the best ones, the oldest ones, are the modified remains of once stately homes. The halls wide enough, the rooms large enough, to pack away a dozen folks and a casket in Viewing Room A, a handful in B, fifty in C. Or open the connecting doors for one great room with seating for a few hundred.

I always wonder about the original owners, their families, how they might have felt if they knew one day their dining room and parlor would be occupied by a Batesville Truman, with mourners huddled around asking if he ever looked that well in life. Would they be proud that their home was used as a last stopover for the deceased, or revolted at the idea of embalming fluids and blood running down their basement drain.

I spoke some years ago of a mission. I’ve been doing this to the extent I could, and locally we have a group of men who I can count on to help bring a man to his final resting place. My knees no longer being what they once were I sometimes have to bow out. I’m a bit disapointed that I have been unable to do more with this, but i have done what i couild, quietly and with as much dignity as I can muster.

There are no lack of volunteers for my brotherinlaw, so I’m an innocent bystander. All the same, my thoughts run to the people who built this once stately home, the mourners there now, and who will (if anyone) wonder these things about me, when my day approaches.

Wake today. It’s cold here. It’s so cold my metaphor generator is running at about 2% capacity so I can only get it to say “It’s colder than ….”

It’s been a nice time visiting with the inlaws. Sisterinlaws drink all night and then wake to say “This milk has a horrid aftertaste” (the milk tastes fine) “Og put the bags in the sink overnight-(Canadian milk is sold in plastic bags, everyone has a little pitcher that holds exactly one bag and you pour it right out of the bag) that MUST be it, the metal taste from the sink leached into the milk!!” Yep. That’s it, for sure, the inert stainless of the sink seeped through the impermeable plastic bag and tainted the milk. It couldn’t be that the TASTE IS IN YOUR MOUTH FROM THE SEVENTEEN BLOODY MARYS YOU DRANK LAST NIGHT.

Even in the frozen tundra, I’m surrounded by people utterly out of their minds. You’d think the weather would kill off someone that nuts.