Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Wearing the Pointy Hat of Shame

It is a common ritual in Scott's family that if you make a bone-headed mistake, you will be teased about it mercilessly until someone else comes along and makes a bigger bone-headed mistake.  Yes, they feed off the weak, though in a good-natured way.

I guess it's my turn for the teasing. 

Recently the wife of one of Scott's many cousins passed away.  As in this past Friday.  Since this particular cousin is a local cousin, Scott's older brother (the funeral director) took care of the arrangements.  

Sensitivity Disclaimer: Please let me say here that I do not think that dying, nor dying from cancer, is funny.  It isn't. 

Anyway, his brother relayed information to us about said arrangements via an email containing the copy for the obituary and the dates and times of the visitation and funeral.  I read the dates and times aloud to Scott, taking care to note that we should likely go to the visitation, scheduled for 5-8 on Sunday night because I needed to work during the funeral and we didn't think he should drag the kids to this funeral.  Sunday, 5-8, got it?

So Sunday afternoon comes along and we bathe and dress the children, cajoling them into nice clothes, begging them to avoid puddles in the driveway, and cranking the music so that they didn't nod off on the drive to the funeral home.  If you happened to pass us on the highway, yes that was an entire family of four singing Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" as recorded by the cast of Glee.  And if you thought we happened to be dancing rather vigorously for riding in a car, then you clearly haven't lived dangerously, nor done the whole "Let's try to keep a drowsy five-year-old from nodding off at 5:30 p.m. so he'll still go to bed when he's supposed to in a few hours" sacrificial dance to the sleep gods.

Now, this particular cousin and his wife did not have a bevy of friends, so we fully expected the visitation to be on the less crowded side.  But we were wholly unprepared to pull up to the funeral home and find not another soul.  As in a completely empty parking lot, with a tumble weed of sweet corn husks rolling through on the lonely wind.

Confused, Scott calls his mom.  Who tells us that the visitation was from 1-4 p.m. and not 5-8 p.m. as I had thought.

Wha???  How had I messed this one up?  I swear I read the times right from the obituary...

Except that after Scott's brother had forwarded on the obit, he apparently sent a revised one with the changed visitation time.  It had originally been scheduled from 5-8, but was moved to 1-4.  Not only that, but his brother also sent Scott a text containing the time for the funeral and the updated time for the visitation.  Scott hadn't noticed, and, therefore I believe that he should be equally as responsible for this snafu.

But, nope, that's not going to happen.  So, for at least a little while, I get to wear the family dunce cap...

4 comments:

parenting ad absurdum said...

Love it. Not the dying part, obviously. But the sacrificial car dance, especially. I do that one often.

vanita said...

Nuh uh. I totally do not see any of this being your fault. Nope. If you were me, (not I, you) trust me, you'd have a few words about where they could put that hat.

Helene said...

If anything, it was an innocent mistake...and Scott's at fault, too, the way I see it! I always tell family and friends not to even bother discussing get togethers with Tim because he'll either forget to tell me or he'll mess up the important details, resulting in exactly what happened to you all.

Thank you so much for your support and kind words yesterday in regards to BFF's comment on my blog!! The support I've received has been nothing short of amazing!

WildThingsMom said...

We must be living parallel lives. Ian can't find his wallet or keys on a daily basis nevermind keep track of more important details. *sigh*

And Finn has kicked Justin Bieber to the curb and is love with Lady GaGa, particularly "Telephone" and "Bad Romance." =)