Funerals Bring Out The Kid In Me

Age is nothing but a number. It’s such a cliché thing to say but it’s true. It has to be or the reality is I’m mentally aging in reverse. In fact, don’t even ask me how old I am. I’m relearning numbers.

Recently I attended a funeral that I was not prepared to attend. Not because of the sadness and what have you. I didn’t have anything to wear. I’ve succeeded in not having to dress like an adult for work but completely disregarded the fact that there might be non-work events that may require attire that is not in the form of a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I can never get it right.

So, the day before the funeral I bought an outfit that included a pair of slacks that matched a blazer I had. Well, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve worn that blazer and in addition to it having shoulder pads, it had also shrunk to an unreasonable size. On top of that, it was really cold outside and my painted-on blazer wasn’t going to cut it so I wore my peacoat over it. I couldn’t put my arms down. Paired with my 5-inch heels that I also hadn’t worn in a couple of years, I was miserable. It only got better when we got to the church. We arrived 10 minutes before the service and the place was packed. So much so that we had to park across the highway from the church, and thus began this entire ordeal.

It was a good 5-minute hike uphill to the church and by the time we got to the top I was really regretting my outfit choice. I spent the next 1.5 hours hating life, which is admittedly a pretty selfish thing to feel at a funeral. But I couldn’t help it. I felt like I couldn’t move, which is also a selfish thing to be annoyed about at a funeral. To compliment my poor outfit choice, I made a bad hair choice: I wore it down. Every time I had to move it out of my face I had to lower my head because my arm wouldn’t bend past a 45-degree angle. I looked like a mannequin.

The uncomfortableness, by the way, spilled over into conversation. Because we’d gotten there right before the service started (and apparently everyone else had camped out) there was nowhere to sit. So we ended up in a lovely standing spot next to my husband’s friend and his more comfortable looking wife. I like this better-dressed-than-me wife but it’s hard to have a conversation with her because we have nothing in common, obviously. Nevertheless, I tried. Recently I decided to go alcohol-free from Jan. 1st to April 1st so I thought I’d ask her about her break from alcohol. The conversation was going great until I told her I was doing this strictly for vanity purposes. No other reason – not my health, not my family. I want to be able to feel comfortable and move all of my limbs freely in my clothing. Also, sucking in my stomach is starting to hurt. She raised her eyebrows and said “oh”, then turned around and that was the end of that conversation. Whatever.

The bummer about the end of that conversation was that my attention was redirected to my feet. I hadn’t worn heels in a long time and after walking up a mountain and standing for nearly 20 minutes, my dogs were barking. I tried leaning against a wall but that only worked for a few seconds. At one point my husband asked me if I wanted him to get me a chair and like a modest idiot, I told him I was fine. I looked over at a woman across from me – who was comfortably sitting in a chair – to see what page in the service pamphlet we were on. There were still 3 fucking pages to go. I was not fine.

Then, as though I was being tested by Jesus or blessed by Satan, an older woman (adjacent to me) got up from her chair. “She has 10 minutes”, I thought to myself. At approximately 10 minutes and zero seconds, I sat in her chair, confidently. Zero regrets. Look, she had a cane to hold her up and I didn’t, OK?

Sitting didn’t matter though. It only made my blazer tighter. As people cried during the eulogies, I focused on not tearing through my blazer like the Incredible Hulk.

Eventually, the service ended and after half-hugging the family (because I was too scared to bend my arms too much) we made the 5-minute trek back to the car. BTW, not one person offered us a ride to our truck even though I looked like I had just learned how to walk. That was probably my karma for stealing that chair so I guess we’re even.

So there you go. My proof that age is nothing but a number. I may never learn how to be a real adult but I have learned what to do when life hands you a tight-ass blazer: you work your way through it until you can take it off and move again.

LOL JK the moral of the story is: wear shit that you feel comfortable in, settings are irrelevant. You do you. The end.