The Funeral

This is a copy of what I posted to a support group, but something I had been meaning to add to this. It is about attending the funeral. If you read the board, there are a couple embellishments to what was on the board, especially the last paragraph.

When I heard that MIL was sick and "unresponsive", I got excited and almost happy. Three days later when they decided to remove life support, I had less emotion.

As far as the funeral went, I attended the wake an the funeral, and both were pretty much OK.
My only fear was expressing the wrong emotion -- either crying because I get caught up in the moment no matter who died -- or grinning. If I cried, it would appear to be crocodile tears and not what it was since people know we didn't like each other. However, what surprised me was how NEUTRAL I felt about the whole thing, so I managed to keep up the neutrality through the funeral. I stared at the coffin the whole time and thought to myself over and over again "It's all over, she is in there."

One thing that was going around the support board is that wearing red at the funeral is a sign that you don't like the person. I could not find any references to that on the internet, but I did read that it wasn't a proper color to wear :) To the wake, I wore a dark blue dress. Under it I had on Christmas panties that had the words "joy" and "peace" on them (in red). ..And I had on a red bra. The next day, for the funeral, I had the perfect outfit. It was a suit that had a black skirt, a black jacket trimmed in red and a red shell top. Just subtle enough. Wearing mostly black with some red mixed in. At the funeral, I wore the same red bra (I had only worn it a couple hours the night before) and red panties. Oh, and to be sure, I had hubbie pre-approve the outfits when he was home right after the death. I neglected to say that red had any meaning, but I presented several things and steered him towards picking that suit.

Since there has been some amusement from the support board posters about the panties, I may take a photo of part of the material so it can be better described.

My biggest problems with the funeral were sleeping arrangements and my Mom.

I did not want to sleep in MIL's nasty house, I wanted something clean. I did not want to go to my Mom's house, because she is always riding my back to turn the other cheek. I also wanted to avoid my Mom who would be hanging around at the wake and the funeral telling me everything that I did wrong. I reserved a hotel room in town, but DH didn't like it. I had an angel save me. My best friend from work, without question, left straight from work, wen to the wake with me and stayed by my side at the wake and overnight with me at the hotel. She's a keeper! She treats me better than anyone in my family or his and I let her know how special she is. (IL's town is about a 3 hour drive from where I work).

There was a picture posted taken at DH's first wedding. I found it to be amusing that it was there. It was a pose in the front of the church of JB, DH's ex in her wedding gown, and DH's ex-inlaws. DH was not in it. Considering how he feels about her and the wedding, he did not know it was there. My "miss proper" Mom was mad about it being there, but I think it's funny, whether it was there as a dig at me or not. The funniest thing about it to me is that JB was wearing the same dress that she wore to our wedding 5 years later. I had heard that she used the same dress!

JB's family consisted of a son, my hubbie, a daughter, SIL, two grandaughters, a grandson and some great-grandchildren.

They don't like the nephew's wife either. I'll post more about that separately, but she is considered an outcast. Somehow, the two of us ended up sitting together and enjoying each other's company at the post-funeral luncheon. I find her to be a nice and pleasant person. In short, to hear hubbie talk, all of nephew's faults are because of her and all of his successes are in spite of her, but the family has never given her any reason to not want to be around. Sound familiar? I'll put more about her in a separate post.