Untimely Death of a Jesus Freak

I couldn't get out of going to a church funeral today. Son of one of my wife's many cousins, the 44-year-old guy was incinerated in a bizarre garage accident, along with his inseparable pet dog. Nobody seems to doubt that it was an accident, although he had in recent times become even more of a Jesus freak than usual. He was bipolar. He also seemed extraordinarily happy on the morning of his death. Did he know what was coming?

It was a very unpleasant service in a hot church. When we arrived at 11.00am, it was 25° outside, but rapidly warming up. The church was packed and stuffy, and the air-conditioning in the lobby did not penetrate far into the body of the church. This was an evangelical Anglican church, and the songs were awful:

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine
But God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine... etc etc.

The sun was not doing any forbearing today. The ceiling fans did little. By the time the coffin was carried outside, it was blazing down at 30°. I'm just glad it wasn't this afternoon, as the temperature has now (6 pm) climbed to 41° (106°F).

We learned something of Matt's life (we had never met the deceased). Apart from endless detail of his devotion to the church blah blah blah, we heard that he was a guitarist with a particular fascination with the music of the '70s Australian rock band AC/DC. (The relatives who carried the coffin at the end were all wearing AC/DC t-shirts.) In consequence, much of the music was very loud indeed. My wife almost had a panic attack during the slideshow of his life, with the recorded accompaniment being at a ludicrously high volume, combined with stuffiness, ill-fitting shoes, and the inability to leave her seat without creating a disturbance. But she made it through.

Before this incident we had a moment of embarrassment. One of the other cousins was doing a reading of that passage from Ecclesiastes: There is a time for everything... etc etc. My wife (who used to be quite religious but is much less so now) was following the words and when we came to:

A time to keep and a time to throw away,

She tapped my shoulder, pointed to the last two words, and whispered: "throw up."

I couldn't help starting a laugh. Now laughing at a funeral service in church during a bible reading is not exactly considered proper behaviour. Of course I suppressed it very quickly, but my brother-in-law turned to me and asked: "Are you all right?" Maybe he thought I was having some sort of fit. I don't know who else noticed it, but of course nothing else was said.