no worries I'd facebook funeral arrangements

a friend was over last night and was mentioning an odd text he got last weekend from a number he did not recognized that "David had passed away funeral arrangements and the Obituarie was going to be in Saturday's paper"...I saw the text and yes obituary was spelled wrong & everything but the disturbing part for S was David who?! He called a mutual friend to make sure it was not my David and figured he would watch for Saturday's paper. Who on earth would send out such a text without at the very least giving out a full name, David is a fairly common name more than likely a person might know more than 1 and for that matter who the hell would send that information out in a text?! clearly social media would be a better place for that sort of info!

funeral chicken phenomena continues

the sibling of a close friend passed away this week and David's first thought was to pick up chicken my goodness he is such a Southerner! Naturally I put together a ziti and my partner in crime(being a Northerner) was putting together a lasagna!

fried chicken phenomena

shortly after David & I married his grandmother died and I was introduced to the fine Southern tradition of showering the grieving family with buckets, boxes and hell maybe even bags of fried chicken. Seriously there was chicken for days! Being a northerner some sort of pasta dish was always the covered dish of choice for a grieving family. Anytime I send something down here it is generally a baked ziti because I know they'll have plenty of chicken, ridiculous amounts of chicken The added benefit is that the recipe is easy to double and it'll take care of dinner here as well. And I guess I'll be making one this week as a friend of David's family passed away suddenly last night. I did not know him very well I usually saw more of the wife but it is shocking to think wow 58 he was so young...

the family funerals

with Missy & Jenn losing an aunt this weekend I have been thinking about funerals and how very hysterical some of my family funerals have been through the years. We have been fortunate and not had so very many but the ones we have had you could sell tickets-no really.
However the more I thought about(and laughed) and considered blogging about some I realised the only one who reads my blog that would find them funny would be my brother because well
a) he's been to all of them and
b) he knows all the players
but then I remembered Chris might enjoy one as his brother who was my brother's best friend in high school came along to my grandmother's funeral. Why you would purposefully drive to NY to go the funeral of a woman I don't think he ever met? I'm sure there was a reason at the time but it escapes me a this point. Patrick jumped right into the receiving line with the rest of us confusing more than one relative wondering who the red headed kid was. Hell he might have even wound a pallbearer for all I remember!
The funeral home was in Queens run by the stereotypical NY Italian guy Vinnie or something equally ethnic sounding and for added flavor the wake going on in the other room was like a bad episode of the Sopranos and perhaps we should leave it there. I'm not even going to start in on the relatives that neither my hubby or my SIL have even met yet. Ah well they married in too late to escape now..

more funeral talk

the grandfather of a friend passed away last week so I went to the wake yesterday evening. Are they not called wakes anymore? family receiving friends, visitation hours-is wake just a catholic thing or a northern thing or a catholic northern thing? No idea but I went anyway he was in his nineties poor health so it was one of those "it was a blessing" "it was quick at the end" **
sort of wakes however they still just creep me out a little ok a lot. My parents have always had a large network of friends, acquaintances, co-workers etc so it seemed like my brother & I were dragged to a whole lotta wakes as kids. Quite frankly an inordinate amount of wakes if you ask me and I always hate them they are like cocktail parties without the cocktails and oh yeah a DEAD body up front yuck, when I go I want cocktails to actually be served.
**note to my brother I did manage to work it in :)