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I went to a funeral today, and it was amazing.

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by 93Devil, Apr 23, 2008.

  1. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    My Devil...what a story. Thank you so much for sharing it. And I agree with the earlier sentiment. So far, I've lived a pretty damn good life. Year and years from now, when I finally kick off, I want people to celebrate the wonderful life I enjoyed, not mourn the fact that it's over. Sing, dance, share stories, laugh and love.
     
  2. Was Will Ferrell there?
     
  3. i always found funerals for senior citizens to be more of a celebration of their life than anything else. of course there are tears, but usually they are outnumbered by the smiles and laughter over the memory of these people.

    The only tough to get through funerals are the ones for younger people or middle aged folks who die without warning (heart attacks, etc)--i dread these. I once had to go to a funeral for a family friend's son (age 13) who was killed playing with a loaded gun. Lets just say there was no choir....
     
  4. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    Spot on with that last observation. Had a friend who's middle son died when he got hit in the temple with a BB. A freaking BB. There simply wasn't any room for good feelings in that one.
     
  5. EE94

    EE94 Guest

    What's the difference between and Irish wedding and an Irish wake?
     
  6. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    The food? The band?
     
  7. EE94

    EE94 Guest

    one fewer drunk
     
  8. Hustle

    Hustle Guest

    A former co-worker of my wife's passed away late last year. He was a former Marine (though I guess they would argue there is no such thing) who had spent most of his life in public service - from the armed forces to Senate aide. He had planned on taking a job at the Pentagon before his cancer came back and, ultimately, took his life.

    He was buried at Arlington in a service that, as long as I'll live, I will never forget.

    There was like a two-month delay between his viewing and the burial, just because of the backlog of funerals at Arlington. But when the day came, it was snowing - something that we didn't get much of this winter.

    It was weird taking my car into Arlington where, when I'd visited before, I'd always just gone to the visitor's parking lot. The grounds weren't reserved for people like me and my car.

    The service was in the chapel. Two Marines pushed his casket in and demonstrated a precision I'd rarely seen in my life - probably the last time was when I last saw the Old Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The service was mostly sad, though one person's eulogy was pretty funny. Sen. Ensign was one of the eulogists and did very well, as you would expect from someone so used to public speaking.

    The actual burial was unlike anything I've ever seen. We waited in a long line of cars and were one of the last ones to the internment site - we actually missed the service there because there were so many people and we parked so far away.

    But I was struck by the regiment, or whatever their division was called, as they left. It occurred to me I had never seen so many soldiers in one place at one time; even all those trips to Quantico, all I saw was mostly forest and the occasional building.

    The lone guy in the back barked orders and came as close to the description of 'barrel-chested' as I'd ever seen. The snow kept falling and often, we'd hear planes fly overhead on the way to National - though there was no way we'd ever see them. The snow gave the whole thing a muted quality.

    I was taken by the fact that someone I knew belonged to the ages in a place where only heroes lie. RIP, Colonel D.
     
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