The Funeral...Part 2- Repost

We all meet in the lot of the hotel to head to the church. My brother arrives with his 2 year old, and his teenage pregnant girlfriend that has never even met our grandparents and quite frankly neither her nor the baby should have been there.

We arrive at the church and the first thing I notice is my families apparel. My sister has tattoos all over her arms, a few not appropriate for a church setting and she has on a dress with sheer sleeves in an attempt to disguise the tattoos but only makes them more noticeable. My brother has on a dress shirt from 100lbs ago, jeans and dirty workbooks. His son has on dirty tennis shoes, jeans and a tshirt but then was the teenage baby momma...oh hell. she looked like some serious trailer park mess. Her hair had not even been brushed, she wore a family dollar black sundress with huge purple flowers on it, black socks and dirty white tennis hoes.

Okay before you get all offended I want to say if this was the best that they could do then I would not have a word to say about it. But these fools get over 2Gs a month is SS benefits, food stamps, free healthcare, a government check and my brother has a kick ass job where he rakes in the dough. So my feeling is their lack of tactful dress was simply inexcusable. Minimally wash your tennis shoes. At least put a suit on the damn baby who should not have even been there. They sell suits at Walmart for less than $20.

Okay the best accessory that all my family seemed to share out in that church parking lot was a cigarette dangling from each of their mouths, pregnant girl included. Now I am a smoker and try not to judge my fellow smokers, But for the love of god there is a time and a place. And on the church steps under a huge Mary statue is not either the time or place. All our NJ relatives were staring and you could tell they were politely appalled as was I.

After the cigarettes were tossed on the grounds of the church we entered. I at this point had decided that I needed to separate myself from this bunch so I could focus on the funeral and grieving for my loss opposed to monitoring my families every move. I sat on the second row as far from my siblings as possible but still on the same row.

The funeral was Catholic. Not sure how much anyone knows about catholics but apparently they are real big at starting a verse and having the congregation complete it. My family of course only knew to respond to the "and peace be with you" verse. That was real embarassing. At a point in the funeral the rabi/priest/father whatever asked if anyone would like to participate in communion. He said if you do not wanna participate stay seated and pray quietly. I've been to a catholic church once in my whole life. I know that it resembles the blood and body of christ but I really did not see what that had to do with my grandfathers death. And since I didn't quite understand the meaning of that ritual I decided to stay seated and pray. Apparently I was the only one in the entire service that made that decision.

As my family members filed out to take the communion I wondered if they even knew what or why they were doing it. I suspected not. As my mothers row returned to their pew she noticed that I had not gone up and she immediately was horrified that i did not participate in this charade. She turned to me and said "go take your communion"
I simply said "I'd rather not thank you"..."Go take it!!" she whisper-screamed. I said "no and turn around." Since we were on the two front rows Im sure the entire church saw this lovely display. Not to mention her breath reeked of shit and alcohol. It was horrible. As my sisters returned to our row I asked them what did that whole thing symbolized and what the significance of it was. They didn't know.

Then there was a prayer and of course my two year old nephew the only child that was there started to talk loudly so you could hear that and then "SHUSH!" "be quiet now!", then more talking from the baby then the sound of my brother dragging him out while he cried. UGGH!! Why didn't his momma get her lazy a** up and tend to her youngin after all she did not even know our grandparents.

Basically I wanna know if it was inappropriate for me to stay seated in prayer while the rest of people took communion. Please share any insight or opinions on this.. And stay tuned for the burial..It gets better!