The funeral was simple; “one of those common send-offs…” sort of memorial. Those affairs are, more often than not, reality shows in their own rights. Sad is the name of the game. Wear the face of someone watching a Tiffany Hadish standup comedy, with all those four-letter rants, will not get you the thumbs-up. Genuinely sad mourners crying their eyes strawberry-red, amateur actors struggling to kick-start their ‘sad’ genes, ladies trying to sort of prick their tear ducts; yes, sir, it was a common send-off…until an event not in the script happened…the eulogy! Of course, nothing out of the normal happened there. But the uneven, crisscrossing contours on the faces of family members said it all. All will not be well in that house of one less member.
Once back home, all hell breaks loose, and the entire family in combat mood. It was agreed upon earlier to keep the cemetery ceremony to the basics and, especially, “No eulogy!” And yet a relative reads something so full of praise and rosy, it sounded like he was nominating the person for sainthood. That rocked the boat real bad. “No eulogy!” was meant as sort of a truce within the family…not a very functional one. About half of the family had soft spots for the now dead fellow. When even he misses a step or two in his social dealings their reason was, “After all, he’s a human being!”
The other half thought otherwise. For them he was Dracula. Frankenstein and, of course, the Grazianni monster rolled into one; a person who throws his weight around crushing everyone in his path as long as it served his interests. No eulogy would have satisfied both camps.
A couple of guys with tightly folded arms are hanging their heads at a ninety degree angle. “How touching!” one might say. Wait just a minute; they are the very people who gave him the heart attack that put him in the casket!
Of course, we seldom speak ill of people at their funerals. The conventional wisdom seems to be last we don’t want to spar with the dead. No way! Who knows, they might spill all the beans at that Ultimate Destination and spoil your chances of a front row seat in that place of ‘butter and honey!’ With no chance of being asked… “Does the defendant has anything to say?” it’s better to play it nice. The problem is, maybe eyeing a gold medal that doesn’t exist we overdo this things. The guy spent his adult life terrorizing an entire town and we shower him with, “The passionate, kindhearted, and loved by everybody…” which is closer to sacrilege than praise!
A year or so back, there was this funeral ceremony for a gentleman in his mid-eighties. Quite a crowd turns up to see him off, or ‘to push him away.’ Depends on which side of the river you are.) Look, it’s always like that, isn’t it? No one is around when you needed them most and when you end up in that box everyone are there. It’s as if we want to make sure the unlucky fellow doesn’t have any funny ideas of a comeback! Not that this one needed that much tears; he led a very charmed life.
Even in his late seventies, he lived on the fast lane; and on his departure he was riding off into the sunset. What more can anyone ask for! (No wonder he looked fortyish in his last days and made you feel like the Methuselah fellow.) A young man reads his eulogy full of all the nicest of words. The last words, however, stole the show. We were told the gentleman had many projects on the table and that was a pity for him to “leave us so early!” Sorry, what was that again? “It’s a pity he had to leave us so early.” Call them ‘famous last words.’ Still, he’s eighty-five! Are we missing something here? Early what!
There is nothing wrong seeing off the unlucky with nice words. But making things melodramatic to the point of kicking dust on all those ‘Mother India’ sort of films is overdoing it by miles and more. If the still warm body in the casket got wind of any of that some in the ‘Jury of Juries’ up there would be in hot water; “to reinstate or not to reinstate, that’s the question!” the guy, if he was awarded a few seconds of extra time, would have said “I never realized I was such a dandy! I demand to be re-instated ASAP!”
Believe me if an outcast sort of fellow with very few friends passes away and you’re told “You are chosen to deliver his eulogy,” the “I’d better die in ditch;” thing starts making sense. If nature was fair and square the guy should have been in the farthest corner of the Milky Way.
May the dead rest in peace; including the eighty-plus gentleman who left us so early!
The Ethiopian Herald Friday 20 December 2019
Ephrem Endale
Contributer
