Funeral Fun - Uncle Arthur

    Funerals are seen as a sad or depressing event.  But this is often not the case, especially for the staff work work funeral every day.  Undertakers learn to make jokes in almost every situation, the job is just that, a job.

    We were at a small funeral service in a nice church.  The family had been nice, easy to work with and everything was going smoothly.  There were just three of us on the job.  The church was nice, a great view of the coast, not too tricky to work out of, the day was nice.  Overall it was shaping up to be a good day and a good job.

    The conductor, hearse driver and I were standing at the back of the church as the service went on.  We were all in a very good mood as it had been a fun day and a fun job.  They were doing the eulogies, nothing special about them so far.  Then an elderly man got up to give his speech.  As he got up to the podium he said is a shaky and squeaky but clear voice "it's such a pleasure to be here today".

    To which the hearse driver then quietly exclaimed "oh look! It's uncle Arthur!"  For whatever reason the conductor almost fell about laughing, which then got me laughing.  Nobody noticed or heard us, being a large church and a small group, plus we were laughing silently.

    The poor conductor was laughing so hard he had to quietly leave the church and go outside.  This of course made me laugh even more so I had to follow him outside.  There we stood, outside the church giggling away for a couple of minutes about basically nothing.  Every time one of us started to stop laughing they would look at the other, still giggling, and start to laugh again.  All this time the hearse driver just stood there, in the church, with a grin on his face.  obviously proud of his work.

    But that is my point.  That the joke itself wasn't that funny or good (not that it ever was), but so many things had lined up over the day and that one little comment pushed us over the edge.  It is also a good example of how the industry is not what a lot of people expect.  It is not all serious, morbid or sad, but often simply stupid and fun.

    Where ever you go, where ever you work, people are people.  We are silly, stupid, fun and funny, even in the funeral industry.

An~~