A Funeral To Remember

We thought we were early but the church was filling up and we were lucky to find a space in one of the back pews. After my last conversation with Junior I shouldn’t have been surprised at the size of the crowd.

When I was in high school, my family lived one house away from the Hopewell’s. The thing was we all knew that Junior was dying. He was born with a faulty kidney, in a time before transplants. So, he knew from the beginning that he wasn’t expected to survive much past his eighteenth birthday. It made it hard for his mother to discipline him because he would remind her. 

Meanwhile his tricks included things like digging a hole in front of the front porch steps one evening while his mother was out on her first date since she’d lost her husband 10 years before. He filled it in with leaves and when she came home, she stepped into it, falling against the concrete steps and breaking her ankle. We heard him laughing up and down the block. That was Junior.

Rosemary and I even shared classes. She was always held up to me as the perfect example of how a teen-age girl should be. Still, we were friends and I did help her get rid of an unwanted pregnancy in her sixteenth year. She couldn’t tell her mom. It took all of my savings but who else could she trust?

Junior, and my brother, Jimmy, were also almost the same age, but so different from each other. Junior was short and a little heavy, his hair looked like he’d been in a wind tunnel. My brother was tall and skinny. He was almost Military in his neatness, even as a little boy.

Junior was always the instigator, and always in trouble for something. His widowed mother had one heck of a time dealing with him. He sometimes enlisted my brother, and almost all the major things Jimmy ever got in trouble for were things that Junior talked him into helping with.

There was the time that they had all the accumulated fireworks for the Fourth of July in my brother’s bedroom. A week before the Fourth, something (I suspect Junior) set them of accidentally, setting our house on fire. It was extinguished before a lot of damage was done, but it was considered an epic event by both families.

My brother had a limit. Their friendship ended the day he caught him beating his beautiful German Shepherd. Our stepmother liked cats but would not tolerate a dog. My brother, Jimmy, loved that dog even though it belonged to Junior. He couldn’t hit him, because of his condition, but he never spoke to him again. Jimmy joined the Army as soon as he was old enough.

Meanwhile, I married early and had my first child by the time I was 20. Junior’s sister had gone away to college and he was bored. No one expected him to get a job, because of his condition. His eighteenth birthday had come and gone, and he was still here. So, he visited me, often in time for lunch.

With the baby on my hands and no one to talk to, I was not unhappy for his company. Anyway, he made me laugh because he worked out various schemes that he couldn’t tell anyone else about and he knew that I appreciated irony and Hypocracy. 

Since he knew that he was dying anyway, and he had no friends but me. He knew he could trust me. I heard him as I was doing dishes, changing diapers and feeding the baby.

“I got to know the Reverend Chrisman, the Pastor of that local church, you know the one. It’s about two blocks from your old house on Hope St.?”

“Of course. My dad and Step-mom still live there. Your mother still lives there.”

“Well, I told him that I needed help because I wanted to be saved. I want to accept Jesus as my personal savior.  I wanted to be baptized, but I needed some questions answered and I was afraid of getting into a bible study group and taking up too much time, asking too many questions.”

He started laughing and pulled himself together. “You should have seen his face. He was so excited.”

“I knew about your condition. I spoke with your mother years ago but she said you were less than enthusiastic about a bible class. I am so happy that God has sent you my way. Of course, I’ll answer any questions you may have. I think you would enjoy a Bible Class and we also have a Youth Group that meet and talk, sometimes they have things that they do together. I think that both would help.”

“Thank you, Reverend. Is there anything I can do to repay you for all of this?”

“I’ll let you know. Would you like to set a time when you and I can sit down and talk about all your questions? What about the baptism? Do you have a special date or time in mind? We can make it a private thing or a church event. It’s up to you.”

I couldn’t believe that he would go so far. “You don’t even believe in religion. I’ve heard you say you don’t believe in God.” I couldn’t believe that now, after all the things I’d seen and heard from him, he was getting religion?

“Are you kidding? You don’t have a religious bone in your head.”

“He chuckled, “Right, so then I went to the local Mason’s hall and I found a Grand Master to talk to. I told him that I thought my dad was a Mason, but I didn’t have any way to prove it and I wanted to be in the DeMolay.” Then I told him about my expected short time and how I think my dad would be happy if I were a part of something he cared about. It would be something he would respect if he were still around. “He invited me to join, and I accepted.”

What was he thinking?

“Why? Why are you doing this? None of this is anything like you?”

“I’ll tell you the truth. Could you put the baby down and listen?”

I did and he continued, “I haven’t been feeling so great. Don’t get excited,” he saw me lean forward and start to get up. “You know I’ve been expecting this and I’m ready. I just thought about my funeral and who would be there. I did some planning. My eulogy, the Reverend will be great. The DeMolays wear capes and have swords, I think that will add some pageantry. I expect that the church groups and the Masons will fill the church and there will be an obituary about my saintly young life.”

I admit I was touched, but I found it outrageous.

So, a few weeks later, I find myself, and my husband in church watching the ceremony of the young men in their capes, and the choir singing his favorite hymn. His mother and sister were in the front, in black and wearing veils. His coffin, carried by six pallbearers, proceeded to the front, where the pastor, in his ecclesiastical robes, shuffled some papers at his pulpit. He began, “the loss of this saintly young man…”

I lost it. Between trying not to cry or laugh, the tears came anyway. I can almost see God with his head in his hands, laughing. That little shit made it work.