How does your family handle death?

My experience hosting the "Swap Shot, Trading Post, Radio Garage Sale" show was sometimes off the wall.
As a teenager, most everyone in the listening area knew who I was due to being a good high school football and hockey player. Anyway, most folks were kind to me on the air.
Fellow high school students? All bets were off.
First, there was no seven-second delay. That's just asking for trouble. I'd take calls and try to write down everything the person was trying sell and their phone number. While concentrating on that, some dingbat would slip in a "fuck you" or the best one ... "I'd like the number for that two-pecker goat for sale."
Will admit to such shenanigans myself ... once.
At one point, the program director pissed me off (actually, it was probably my immaturity). So, one weekday, I took my tuba to a local payphone and called in to the "Radio Garage Sale." Placed the receiver down into the bell of the tuba. When he put me on the air, I let go with a powerful blast through the instrument.
Sounded like the goal horn at Chicago Stadium!

EDIT: Now we return you to regular programming ... "How Does Your Family Handle Death?"

 

It probably shows what a simpleton I am, but the prank phone calls to Swap Shop that Sal and Richard from the Howard Stern Show used to do still make me laugh out loud.

 

Dante’s levels of newspaper hell, in no particular order:

• Proofing obituaries when you are not allowed to make any meaningful changes.
  
• Fishing report
• Track/swimming agate
• Progress edition
• Dimwits on the phone
• Working slot on Christmas for the 12-26 edition
• Paginating the weekly shopper, which exists on a different template than the main paper.

 

Neither of my parents had (or wanted) services. The family was together when they died, nine months apart, and many stories were shared and many a beer was consumed. Just as my parents would have wanted.

My wife's parents both died over the winter. They had services at their local Presby church, they were the final surviving charter members, and my MIL was active in it until the day before she died.

My MIL's funeral concluded with a video of the state song of Wyoming. She grew up in Laramie and always considered herself a Wyomingite even if she lived in South Dakota for much of her life. My FIL's funeral concluded with a video of part of the William Tell Overture, which he used to play on the piano with his daughters. Both were very nice touches and ended the services on a happy note.

 

Ugh, the dreaded “regress” edition … in Hell you get to lay those out over and over and over.

Unless Satan is feeling mean and slips a Grad Tab into the rotation.

 

The reflections in this thread are heartwarming and inspirational. My father lived in a small PA township and taught high school in the neighboring small township. We kids never lived with him there as my parents divorced after 12 years and 5 kids. When my mom remarried we moved to a different state. I tell you this because I think people who attend funerals are often there to support the deceased's family, friends in common, whatever. But for my Dad's funeral which we held directly at the funeral home, it was fairly well attended by former students and town "dignitaries". People we never met who felt enriched by my father's life. And the real kicker is he had retired early from teaching, like 35 years prior to death, so these remembrances by former students were remarkable. The tributes several wrote on the funeral page were a delight to read. All collaborating stories he had told us through the years. He was spiritual, not religious... always said he wanted to be set out on an ice floe if things got bad. It was a veterans funeral, flag and Taps.

Two weeks from cremation to celebration of life. Pre-written obit, no limit to words, we had a lot to tell. Luncheon at a restaurant in his town.

His ashes were spread... somewhere he really liked. So that's how we handled his death.

 

And because I found this thread cathartic, please allow me to me to speak of my mother's funeral. She died February 2021, not alone but only one of us allowed by her side. She died not of Covid, but during Covid. As before, we had a pre-writtnen obit that spared no words. My mom had pre arranged her funeral, on paper, what she hoped for. All methodist, all religious, all pastor driven. We did a great job allowing us 27 instead of 26 people, grandkids singing a hymn with masks, and the unmasked eulogy by my brother, How does one eulogize someone already known? With humor and inside jokes .

 

About multiverses...

While waiting to be transported from a suburban hospital to the one where they were going to rebuild my heart, I sat with my mother and watched Nightline. The main story was a new release by Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers with some obviously scripted drama including a catty exchange between Edie Brickell and Kathleen Battle and Martin playing a music historian as well as himself. It was revealed that the disc was a fundraiser to try to stop further destruction of the Stax Building in Memphis. It had been partially demo-ed under the cover of night by the Ford Family, who had purchased it. There was footage of the partially destroyed building. The program was in progress when the transport ambulance arrived to take me and my mother to Nashville.

A year later I was talking to an old friend from my Tiger High days and asked her if they managed to save what was left of the Stax Building. She had no idea what I was talking about. It never happened. I looked for a new Steve Martin Bluegrass disc. Nope. It was probably the most normal thing I encountered during that time and so it scanned as real to me until I thought to ask about it later on.

 

I quite often have vivid dreams where certain cities or places are mentioned to where I remember entire scenes and discussions. The weird thing is when a future conversation begins and I wonder if I should continue the deja vu or change the subject, because I don't know if that'll wreck the multiverse. (I also dream about working on deadline in radio stations way too much for someone who retired.)

My father believes he'll be involved in a project involving spectrum engineering when he passes into the next dimension because he's already dreamt it and accepted the position.

Who knows? If this is just a game simulation or a higher being's chemistry experiment, it's been a fun life, full of wonder and awe. I woke up again this morning, so I get to see what happens again today!

 

Don't go to Colorado (sorry, MileHigh and others). If I had a dime for every obit I saw that said that this person was a fan of the Denver Broncos ...

I mean, the area I'm in is an over-the-top D-I fishbowl. But I never saw it as over-the-top as I did in Colorado.

 

An engineer of rainbows? Sounds like a great way to spend the next life!

I want to know how Edwin Drood ended and if Hypatia was allowed to rebuild her library. Is Ambrose Bierce still bitter about being a San Franciscan? Did Van Gogh find happiness? (Yeah, yeah, I've seen the clip from Doctor Who and it made me cry.)

 

I'd say it is 50/50 that I would have had the self-discipline to do it your way or if I would have said something very unkind to the priest.