Here is the space where I maybe should be posting the "Grandpa F. 1919-2006" picture, but I would have to crop out my ass first as it is distracting, plus he's looking at me like "WHO ARE YOU?!", plus there's some nice wadded-up Kleenex in the photo and etc.

Long story short, I couldn't get a flight out last night, my mom didn't think he'd make it another 2 days, then a day, then another 2 hrs., then she was right. I didn't even make it onto the airport shuttle. She called me about 45 mins. later, as I was arguing on the phone with the airline/boss/security seat-asswarmer. Then I was told I couldn't change my flight over the phone without having to pay for an upgrade (huh?!), so I had to do it online, which I don't have at home, so I pole-vaulted in to boot the security ass/seatwarmer out of my chair and he rose, stink lines 'a wigglin', just in the nick of time for me to change my flight (which online, for some reason, cost $10 less) in time for the memorial service on Fri. Making me wish I'd just stuck to my original plan of flying out on Fri.

Sheesh.

You may ask what I'm doing at work.

There is no good answer to that question and I'm not about to answer as the answer just pisses me off.

So, instead:

WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING someone to keel over
THINGS I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT DYING
Like, being dead, 'n stuff.
THINGS I DID NOT PARTICULARLY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT DYING.

It really sucks.

It is quieter than here.

Shit on your body turns blue.

Some people, whose names I will not mention (Aunt Fluffy) will try to make it all their drama.

Others (Aunt Sniffy) will just fly in and piss everyone else off (sibling Seagull Management).

Just because someone is dead does not mean that the airline reservation agent is necessarily going to be nice to you.

Cremation takes 24-36 hrs. It is "a process."

People who get cremated do not always get to live in a nice urn on the mantel. We, for example, do not even have a mantel. Plus my mom's sisters would probably fight over who gets the ashes because not all of them have mantels.

Some people get cremated and then they bury the ashes. Huh?!

I guess this is called an "interment".

The "interment" may be on an entirely different day (month, even) as the "memorial service."

At the "memorial service," some people who did not even know him will talk and say a bunch of sh*t.

Probably about The Jesus.

For some reason, we are getting a priest and a nun, even though our family is mixed religions (i.e. some of his daughters "converted from nothing"). All of the sudden, we are Catholic. I don't get it.

On the brighter side, sometimes, people who are cremated talk their wives into having them made into something, such as art, decorative pot(s), or a birdbath.

If your loved one was a military, say, a colonel in Guadalcanal, some guys in uniforms may come to your ceremony and do a flag-foldy thingy and/or a bugely thingy.
HOWEVER: the bugely thing may actually be only a guy with a crappy boombox instead of an actual bugler (?), and when he presses PLAY, it doesn't work.

Also, Blowhard Uncle Scott is a douchebag.

I don't think my grandparents wanted anything other than a graveside service, but if Blowhard Uncle Scott, who is currently living proof that the military will take ANYBODY, gets involved, they may have:
-flag-foldy dealie
-bugler/malfunctioning boombox
-21-gun salute, AT A FUNERAL HOME, which alarms or possibly gives some of its visitors a heart attack.

Nice.

My mom says she's just relieved that no one has talked my grandma into having him made into a birdbath.