I get to church and our regular church organist was playing the funeral today - groovy. The funeral was to start at 10:30 - but they were late - not that big of a surprise, the weather has been kind of crappy, so things were taking a bit longer - it happens.
The family and funeral home finally arrived. I went to the back of the church to check on something - I can't recall what it was now - but I was approached by the funeral home director and was told that everyone was to receive a flower - because one of the children of the deceased, the one that was going to give a eulogy, asked if the grandchildren would pass out a flower to each person because there was going to be relevance to the flowers in the eulogy. Ok, fine - nice touch. You are probably wondering "how does that affect you if you are there to sing?" Well that is a valid question. All it meant was that we had to keep singing the opening hymn until everyone had flowers and was seated - it did not take as long as I thought it might.
So then our new priest, Father Rafael, says " I would like to invite Richard to come up an say a few words" Notice how he said .. "a few" So I go back in the sacristy, thinking, "This won't take long" The eulogy begins - and Richard was a low talker - so I could not get everything he was saying. After about ten minutes I was thinking to myself, "well he should be done soon" - and my organist agreed. Then another ten minutes went by.. ok, now it is getting to be a bit long. At this point, my organist actually fell asleep in his chair in the sacristy. Now Richard was recalling his mother's life - but I think he was going year by year, at one point I heard.. "In 1938... and then later on I heard .. then in 1985" Really?
Finally another 15 minutes later, my organist woke up and said. "Oh man, where are we - " I respond, "he is still talking" He rolls his eyes and closes them again.
All the time this was going on, I was texting Father Paul telling him what was happening. I was not getting a response - although I was hoping too. I also was texting my friend Justin - now Justin is a first year seminary student and is a riot to be around. A very sweet guy, but very cynical. So, I was telling him how long this funeral was going on and he responded, "oh too bad, I am in my bed at school" I respond "Nice" He said "poor Rafael" No kidding. At one point, I ended up looking out there to make sure that Father did not fall asleep - he didn't. Such a patient man.
Well after 45 minutes, Richard finally stopped eulogizing. The altar servers, who are older men of the parish, came back and one of them said.. "45 minutes, I can't believe it, 45 minutes" He was right - I checked the clock and just shook my head.
As the mass continued and the organist suggested that I just sing one verse of the psalm. I said "no, that is not fair", although I totally agreed with him.. He finally agreed that I was right - but let me tell you, the rest of the service went along pretty quickly -
We then came to the end of the service - a great - grandchild of the deceased was to sing the closing hymn, "Amazing Grace." She was like 11 years old - she had a pretty decent voice! The only problem was that there are five verses of the song - and we are not sure where it came from, but she sang three extra verses! And when she was done, the congregation applauded - not really appropriate in church, but it was important to the family - I thought it was sweet. After she was done and the family went on their way, our organist said to me, "I have been in this business for 35 years, and I have NEVER heard of those three extra verses!"
I just started to laugh -
Normally when I do a funeral it takes about 50 minutes or so.. but this funeral was almost 2 hours..It was the long funereal I have done this year. The next day, we had a terrible snow storm, and alot of the schools were cancelled. My organist is also a school teacher - so I asked him if he had school, he said "no but it is good because I am still recovering from yesterday's funeral." Nice.
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