The Funeral Part 1
I think maybe I can finally type this and see the keyboard long enough to finish it.
My brother wasn’t exactly a dub. He was pretty far into drugs for the last few years. I could see the turmoil in him as he was torn between what his very sharp mind told him and The Truth © , as well as the version of events he was “supposed” to believe about his childhood. I had been trying to help him along for a while, and he was about to the point where he could take the Truth about The Truth © .
It was not so much a surprise that he had been killed. But it was a surprise to me that he was actually doing absolutely nothing wrong when he died. He was a passenger in a vehicle and on the way back to work from a lunch break, the driver took a curve too fast and blew out a tire, putting them into the woods at an insane rate of speed for the road. As far as I know, neither drugs nor alcohol were found at the scene.
On the phone en route (16 hour drive) I was told that my uncle was planning to give the Funeral Talk © , assuming his mother was ok with it. When I got to my dad’s house, my brothers were working on the eulogy, it had been decided that my other younger brother would give it. They slid it to me, handwritten, It looked like a talk outline, almost. Very little about our brother, but a lot about The Truth © . So I went to work typing it into a pc to make it “easier to read” and pretty much scraped everything written so far. Instead it was 4 paragraphs about him, how happy he made people and what he loved, as well as how honest he was about whatever happened. If he did something wrong, he didn’t hide it or beat around the bush. When he wrecked his car and was asked what happened, he flat said “I was drunk”. After that was a paragraph basically saying is wasn’t a preventable tragedy, and he wouldn’t want us blaming ourselves. Then, the last paragraph said that it shouldn’t take something like this for family and loved ones to get together, a jab at the whole concept of the “bad association” shun.
It was said over and over by his mother, his sister, and me that under no circumstances was this to become a recruitment session for Jehovah’s Witnesses like the usual funerals go. We wanted this to be about him and a show of what a great loss this was. We wanted to play “Simple Man” by Lynard Skynard purely because it was his favorite song. After going back and forth for 2 days, tons of dub stuff getting stuffed in and with me being the only one pushing back and getting it out, we managed to get the entire eulogy to be about our brother, and it was wonderful.
With this all pretty much settled, we went to the “Viewing” as the dubs all have to call it…the Wake for the rest of humanity. So then comes all the people I didn’t really want to see. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Most were sincere enough to make it ok, and I saw a few of my family that were non dubs that I had not seen in forever. I got their contact info because I would really like to get to know them now that I can. I was going back and forth between my ex stepmom, dad, and sister most of the time. Finally after everyone had filtered out and I thought I was mostly alone, I stopped and actually took in where I was, and watched the dvd of pictures they had playing. It hit me like a ton of bricks, and I couldn’t keep it in anymore. Someone I didn’t know took a few steps towards me and I backed up from them shaking my head because I didn’t want to be touched, I just wanted to feel it all. They went and got my sister, which by that time the wave of reality had come and gone and I was more “there”. Finally I just sat down by the coffin and put my back on it, I just wanted to sit with my brother one last time. As people were walking out they made it a point to explain to me about God and how maybe I need to get back and how Jehovah knows people’s hearts…all I wanted to say was “well I’ll make sure to remember that when I’m back here for you”. But I didn’t say anything. Everyone finally left and I just sat there for a while, something I just wanted to do.