Thread: Vent here!

Yeah, I figured we all needed someplace to yell at the world. Mind you, if you only have one sentence, don't bother. Like, one paragraph minimum.

Here, I'll get us started:

So I've got a really messed up family, 'specially on my dad's side.
And there's this one uncle of mine who just died,and it was the most messed up funeral EVER.

So he's kind of a messed up guy himself. He's a Veitnam veteran, but he was faking asthma most of the way through, and he was closer to a dishonorable discharge than a cheap lawyer to an ambulance. And he'd been married four times. So anyways, he was getting kind of ill and stuff, since he was a smoker and over 50, and they put him in a rest home. Well, he meets one of the nurses (not a young one, mind you), and they wind up getting married. Well, turns out she was WAY abusive. Like, every month after she got the retirement check or whatever in the mail, she'd leave him in front of the ER and go. Then she'd pop up again the next month right before the check came again. Yeah. And technically it's legal, because she's leaving him in a place of care...

Well, so anyways, you get the point about his wife. Well, after a while he starts to get lung cancer, and the doctor suspects it and tells his wife, but she says that she won't let them do the tests, and since she has power of attorney and whatnot, they can't do the tests. Well, when she leaves to go home for a while, my dad asks my uncle why he doesn't just have the doctor do the tests no matter what she says, and he says that if he disagrees with her she'll punish him later. Yeah, really messed up. Well, anyway, in the end they manage to get the test, and he did have lung cancer. Well, after a while it spreads and he gets to the point where he can't eat or drink because his throat doesn't work properly and stuff.

Well, not too long afterwards he finally passes away and such, and the funeral plans begin. (Oh joy.) So in his final wishes and whatnot, he says he wants to be cremated and put at one of the local military forts. Well, nobody objects, so things move on. His brothers and sisters offer to pay for the funeral and stuff, since his wife doesn't seem to willing. So his body goes to the guys at the mortuary, and they ask if we want him embalmed, and we turn them down since he's going to be cremated. Well, all of his sudden, his wife throws a fit 'cuz she wants him buried, not cremated, and the arguments begin (quoth his wife: "You may have been able to change things when he's alive, but now he's dead and his body's mine!" She seriously said those exact words). After a few days of arguing, things become pressing, because state law says that he has to be embalmed after so many days whether he's cremated or not. Now, his wife asks about the $10,000 death benefit, and finds out that it's already gone and spent, and she throws another fit. So the mortuary person asks what she wants done with the body, and she says, word-for-word: "I don't give a damn. I wouldn't spend 50 cents on that bastard." So the family takes over and has him cremated and everything.

Now the funeral plans are coming up. His three sons (all Marines, two in Iraq currently, the other here for the moment) and daughter write an obituary and bring it to her to be OK'd and stuff. The ask her if she has one written, and she says, "No, but I can this week", and they're like, well, we've just written one, and you can go through it and change it if you want. So, without looking at it, she crumples it up and throws it on the floor and says that she'll write one. Yeah. Real kindly-like. So she never quite gets around to writing one, so we wind up using the one the kids wrote anyways.

Now to the actual funeral: His wife's mother now shows up on the scene. We're planning to only have a graveside ceremony with military honors and such (21 gun salute or whatever), and while we're planning more arguments break out. All of a sudden his wife wants to move the funeral elsewhere, and the family is threatening to pull out their funds if they do, since he wanted his funeral at the military graveyard, and nobody's happy. Suddenly the wife's mom says, "Why doesn't everybody who's not important just leave!". Now let's see: Son, Sister, Brother, Daughter....Stepmother! Wow. Well, that doesn't go over well, and she gets kicked out.

In the end, virtually no plans were made. Just the bare-bones military service and we leave. Well, we show up at the funeral, and it's looking like it'll be pretty stormly later, so we ask if we can go inside and have a quick service so we're out of the rain, and since nothing's scheduled, the military people say it's okay. So we go in, and we realize we don't have any music. So after a while, his sister says she has some of his favorite Western tapes out in the car, and there's a radio somewhere we could play it on. So we finally agree, and she goes and gets it. I leave to go get some umbrellas, and when I come back in there's Johnny Cash playing. At a funeral. Ring of Fire, to be specific. I kinda think that one was planned.

Well, anyway...Funeral starts. All the brothers and sisters get up and say a few words, mostly about my uncle when he was a kid. Then the widow's sister gets up, and says a bit about him during the time she knew him, and sneaks in a comment about how her sister is an angel and we're all jerks. This is all dotted with "Speak up!"s and "Talk louder!"s from his wife's mother. Meanwhile: His sons have requested that they get the flag used during the service afterwards, them being Marines and all. Well, his wife's brother (who was apparently only brought to do her arguing, since he attended neither the funeral, nor the graveside service) now steps up and says that his wife will get the flag or else. The arguing goes on most of the morning. Now, back to the funeral itself, they finish up, and go to leave the building to procede to the grave, and all of a sudden we realize the color guard veterans have all gone AWOL on us. Honestly, I can't blame them. I mean, they might have been WWII, Korea and Vietnam veterans, but you gotta be stupid to get involved in a family fued over something like this. So the family wanders around a bit, and eventually we all leave with no gun salute and no flag service. I thought it was hilarious, but it WAS a funeral, so I pretended not to be quite so amused.

Now, all is said and done. My final question:
WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO BE RELATED TO THESE PEOPLE?!?

Yeah. Anyway, thanks for reading this far. Feel free to vent about whatever you want...