[jt25man]

Today I took my wife to the funeral of one of her friends. She died on Monday from cancer a week before her 28th birthday. Before I begin to tell about my wonderful day, I have to give at least some back story.

Her friend Shorty knew she had cancer for quite a while, and was even getting medicine to treat it (and no I didn't find out what type), but then about six months ago she hooked up with a charming fellow that decided to use the money for her medication to go out boozing and other things that essentially deprived her of the opportunity to actually beat the illness and get on with her life. More back story I found out today is that she's from let's say an afluent upbringing and her parents and most of her relatives may not be filthy rich, but they get by better than most. I could tell this by the cars they were driving. Meanwhile the boyfriend's family are driving the beat up cars, and my favorite was the mini-van with the missing window covered by plastic and duct tape, which on the other side had pictures of the girl in a collage, and of course the kids were wearing t-shirts with "We'll miss you Aunt Shorty," at the top, and her name at the bottom, of course with the boyfriend's last name, because 2 weeks ago while she was in the hospital and pretty much knew she wouldn't make it, his family apparently coerced her into marrying him so they could get all her stuff, and then be able to get away with the showboating that went on at the furneral.

So, my wife and I leave early this morning to go to her friend's house so that we could all carpool to the funeral. Her friend's live-in boyfriend is best friend's with Shorty's exhusband, so he was coming with us also. Naturally, this is the second time I've ever met her friend and the live-in boyfriend, and never met the other people. So what's my wife do, she suggests that I ride with the boys, and she'll ride with the girls.

This is where it gets interesting, and the hillbilly aspect comes in. The girls take off down the highway to get there as fast as they can, meanwhile I'm stuck with the two old drinking buddies who decide to take the back roads and go as slow as possible to see how many beers they can knock back on the way there, and of course they're chain smoking. I'm sitting in the back getting nauseous from the second hand smoke and the smell of the beer.

So we finally get there, and the women have been there half an hour, went and got flowers and come back. My wife naturally wants to go by a set of roses when I get there and first thing she does is tell me to give her money (this is kind of a fun aside to the story). She bought new shoes for the funeral yesterday, and they're high heels and killing her feet, so she takes them off to walk to the florist, puts them on to go inside, then takes them off for the walk back. We go inside and give the one rose to the girl's mother, and sit down before realizing the service doesn't start for an hour, so we go back outside and my wife decides that the shoes are killing her and puts her green flip-flops back on.

The service was real nice, and I got pinched a few times from nodding off from lack of sleep last night and not feeling well from the wonderful trip over there. The church they attended was in a nice little afluent lake town, with nice houses and a cute little golf course. The drive to the cemetary was slow and took about 20 minutes with the guys knocking back another beer hoping the police escort doesn't notice them. The graveyard service was short and we went back to the church for dinner. The church people and the girl's family sat on one side, and the new hubby and his family took over the other. The anticipated fight between the ex and the current husband didn't happen, and everyone was civil and kept there peace. I was glad that my wife didn't start anything like she wanted to, because I told her I wasn't bailing her out of jail if she did.

Anywho, naturally the trip home the boys knocked back a few more, and chain smoked. This time they threw in a little twist, they stopped in the middle of one of the back roads and got out to each take a piss, one stood at the back and peed in the road, and the other stood at the front and peed into the corn field. At this point the only thing keeping me from laughing really hard was the fact that I was starting to get a headache from the wonderful odors of cigarrette and beer. The ex-husband was happy that one of the church people told us that they were trying to get the marriage annulled due to the fact it was done in the hospital, and more than likely the girl was under duress.

If you're wondering why I'm posting this, it's mainly two reasons, first being that I can't believe that this guy would use the money for her medication on booze and who knows what else, and second because I've never seen such attitude/behaviour at a funeral before. My wife told me that at her friend's dad's wedding last year all the guys were outside drinking it up too.

So my question is, is this a common thing, drinking at funerals, or is anyone else shocked or surprised that people do this?