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Funerals are about the biggest waste of time and money that society has ever come up with. I mean, you are about to spend a small fortune and have people dropping in from all over the country. For what? The person is dead!

First there is the dealing with the funeral director. Like a car salesman, he tries to sell you the most expensive and useless of all items. A casket. If you want to buy something cheap he will play on your guilt by letting you know that the remains are only guaranteed for 100 years in that casket. But, for only another two grand the body will be pristine and smell nice for at least a thousand years! Who cares? The clod buying the casket will be dead himself in less than 20 years and I can almost guarantee that when he dies he is going into the cheap casket!

Then there is the practice of embalming. Now, this particular scam used to have some justification. It was first used during our Civil War. It would take weeks to retrieve the body, ship it on a train and get it home to, say, Michigan. Without the embalming process, what you'd get by the time your Yankee, carpet-bagging son got home, would smell like a drained carp pond. So, embalming was a good idea back then. But why do it now? Granpa Jake either died yesterday in the hospital and can be buried today, or, Jake died 5 weeks ago and they just found him today. Trust me, no amount of embalming will help Granpa Jake. Just get him under 6 feet of dirt before he kills all of the flowers within 5 miles!

The folks who show up at the wake and funeral usually haven't seen the old codger in years. Yet, there they stand talking about how much they are going to miss the deceased. When I croak the last thing I need is a bunch of phony criers with plastic tears. If I liked any of them why haven't I seen them in so long? Just once I wish that the guest of honor at a funeral would leave a tape recording of what he actually thought about all of these fake mourners. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Mine would be something like, " And hello to my sister Louise. Hey, Lou, are you still cheating on your husband with those three circus midgets?" Now, THAT would be a funeral worth going to.

Then it's off to the cemetery where everybody gets into line and follows the hearse to the burial site. This is so the last act of the deceased is to tie up traffic and cause accidents for those left alive. What nonsense. Why can't everybody drive over by themselves? Oh, but then the funeral parlor won't be able to advertise to all of the cars waiting for the procession to pass.

Now the beloved is over his grave and the priest has done his $300.00 worth, everybody says goodbye, return to their cars and drive away. Now we see the real reason why the casket costs so much. Why, it's the "Secret Switch"! The funeral director gives the thumbs up sign and the grave diggers hit the secret switch on the $15,000 casket. The bottom of the casket opens like bomb bay doors on a B-29 and grandpa goes tumbling into the dirt, just like butter on toast, face down.

Hope you got your money's worth.

Learn more about this author, James Ruhnke.
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