Bonus Post: A Funny Funeral Story
From my last post, you'll know that I attended the memorial service for my aunt today. What I didn't tell you in that post was that my family ALMOST BOKE THE PEW during the service.
No one owned pews growing up, obviously, but my family always sat in the fourth row of the left center section, sandwiched in between two other rows of family members. Pap's older brother and his wife and kids and grandkids sat in front of us; his younger brother, whose wife just died, played the church organ, but his kids always sat behind us. We were a row behind where we used to sit, so I'm going to blame the pew's weakness on my cousin, who deserves it for tickling me with palm fronds every year well into my 20s, when he was a grown-ass man.
But I digress.
I don't come from small people, and we were shoulder-to-shoulder in our row. Big shoulders. Some big people, myself included. Before the service began, a pew in the far left section of the church gave a huge CRACK and the folks in it moved to a new one. When a church is more than a hundred years old, I guess the benches get a bit tired. "Ooh, poor them," we giggled. "How embarrassing."
An hour later, after my cousin had delivered a speech about his mom that had even the big brawny men in the family grabbing for tissues, the minister started into a short sermon. And that's when it happened. CRACK. Our pew gave a giant shudder, emitted an ungodly noise, and the back suddenly tipped at a much greater angle than it had before. Mom wanted to raise her hand to ask if we could move. I assumed we were all going down in a blaze of glory and would end up in a giant pile on the floor. My sister stopped blinking. Dad and I looked at each across my sister's head and slid closer to the front of the pew, not daring to place any weight at all on the back. And we both sat like that for the rest of the service. Barely breathing and terrified to move.
The pew survived, though, and so did we. But it was touch and go there for a while. 😁
No one owned pews growing up, obviously, but my family always sat in the fourth row of the left center section, sandwiched in between two other rows of family members. Pap's older brother and his wife and kids and grandkids sat in front of us; his younger brother, whose wife just died, played the church organ, but his kids always sat behind us. We were a row behind where we used to sit, so I'm going to blame the pew's weakness on my cousin, who deserves it for tickling me with palm fronds every year well into my 20s, when he was a grown-ass man.
But I digress.
I don't come from small people, and we were shoulder-to-shoulder in our row. Big shoulders. Some big people, myself included. Before the service began, a pew in the far left section of the church gave a huge CRACK and the folks in it moved to a new one. When a church is more than a hundred years old, I guess the benches get a bit tired. "Ooh, poor them," we giggled. "How embarrassing."
An hour later, after my cousin had delivered a speech about his mom that had even the big brawny men in the family grabbing for tissues, the minister started into a short sermon. And that's when it happened. CRACK. Our pew gave a giant shudder, emitted an ungodly noise, and the back suddenly tipped at a much greater angle than it had before. Mom wanted to raise her hand to ask if we could move. I assumed we were all going down in a blaze of glory and would end up in a giant pile on the floor. My sister stopped blinking. Dad and I looked at each across my sister's head and slid closer to the front of the pew, not daring to place any weight at all on the back. And we both sat like that for the rest of the service. Barely breathing and terrified to move.
The pew survived, though, and so did we. But it was touch and go there for a while. 😁
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