The Funeral Hoppers

Last week while I was driving into town I was stopped by a large funeral procession, large even for South Georgia standards. We still pull off to the side of the road here, yes that means both sides of the road. Everyone stops for a funeral procession, no matter if they have to get to work or an appointment.

It's probably someone you know anyway.

This particular procession came from a funeral home near my house and had at least seven sheriff's cars accompanying it, so I knew it must be someone important in my community. Being that I did not have a convenient copy of the Valdosta Daily Times handy with me in the car, I did the logical thing and called the Magistrate's Court in town to see if they knew who it was. My B.F works there and generally knows everything going on, so she is always a good source of information.

I told her what funeral home they had just left and she was able to pull up online all the people that had services there that day. We didn't know the first person at all, so it had to be the second person. I told her about the huge escort and that there had to be a hundred cars or so in the procession. I didn't recognize anyone in the cars, but I didn't have my glasses with me either.

Turns out we didn't know the second person either, but my friend read me her obituary so that we could see if we knew any of her kin. It was a really good obituary too, this lady had lead a full life of travel and done quite a bit of philanthropy.

So my friend read me all the other good obituaries in the paper that day while I continued my drive into town to go visit the sex store (we only have one) to buy some goodies for my husband's homecoming this week, plus pick up his shirts from the dry cleaners.

I was so into it that I had to stop her. "Good God, we are enjoying reading these obituaries too much, don't you think? You know what this means right?"

We are a hop, skip, and a hobble away from being Funeral Hoppers. Those women of a certain age that get all dressed up to go to viewings. Some of them travel to different counties even to attend really important ones.

Being small town sex kittens, we certainly have done our share of bar and bed hopping. But now that the kids are mostly gone, or don't need us except for money, we realized that it was time for our own lives to start again. However, in our small village there are not many acceptable outlets for women our age that we consider fun.

Here's what we have; garden club, church groups, golf, tennis, "Learning in Retirement" at VSU (great classes, but we are still about three years too young), bingo (she's Catholic), bunko parties, and power walking at the mall. Or endless crafts.

I have about five seconds of patience with scrap booking. It's real big here. I know because I've been to the get togethers. Nothing like five hours with a group of women using construction paper and stickers to decorate family pictures and write cute sayings with colored magic markers.

I expressed an interest in sniffing the markers and oddly they never invited me back to scrapbook. Plus, I try not to attend functions where alcoholic beverages are frowned upon.

We have a good senior center in town, but we (thankfully) are too young for it. They do all sorts of fun things. The bar, restaurant, and club scene here is geared to the college crowd.

Which leaves us with funerals. There's lots of them here and again I must mention that every one knows everyone else. You know you will run into someone you know at a funeral, even if you don't actually know the deceased. It's networking and socializing at the same time. You could find a date, or even a job if the deceased was lucky enough to be employed at the time of their passing.

Plus if you get a good seat next to the casket you can gossip about what everyone is wearing.

You might even get invited back to the house later to eat with the family. Say what you want about the South, but we know how to eat here and the best food ever is after a viewing.

I thought I was making a good case for us to start hitting the funeral circuit to jump start our stalled social lives.

She hung up on me.

I'm sure it was a mistake. Someone must have needed something important at work.