The End of Ends Part I

My WonderHubby and I actually crashed a funeral once.

The mother of a wonderful woman that I met online passed away, and I got notified in an email and had no way to contact her about arrangements or anything. Her mother's hometown wasn't too far from us, so I grew determined that I was going to that funeral. WonderHubby didn't think I'd be able to find it. After all, ALL I knew was her mother's first name, and the hometown my friend was from. Well, courtesy of the internet (insert superhero music here) I tracked down the town's local paper, found the only woman with that given name that died around that time and with a pending funeral in the next few days. OH, and with a daughter who's name just happend to be my friend's. We were good to go. OK, Mapquest for directions to the funeral parlor, infant son in tow, and we were off to the funeral the following day. We make the two hour drive down there, and arrived about 15 minutes before the funeral is about to start, when I suddenly get cold feet. I don't want to go in. WonderHubby now looks at me like I've just lost my mind because I've made him miss work to go and through all of this, and now I'm too scared to go in. So, after a few heated moments in the car, in we go. We meander our way through the throng of people, find my friend, she bursts into tears and all is wonderful, well, sort of, considering her mother had just died. We talk for a few minutes and go find seats in the back in case we need to escape with the little one and the service begins.

Now, before I continue I feel that I need to point out a few things. I am Christian, I was baptised and raised a Lutheran. WonderHubby is Jewish. We have a wonderful respect for the other's religions and everything is very smooth in our home. It's other places where we run into......issues. This was one of those places.

The service was run by a Holy-Roller Sothern Baptist Preacher. Now, in general, I don't have a problem with that and neither would WonderHubby. We both believe that everyone practices their religion the way they feel works for them. Everything went fine UNTIL...

The Preacher asked us to bow our heads in prayer, no problem with that, and then proceeded to do an Alter Call. For anyone who doesn't know what an Alter Call is, it's the time in the service when the Preacher calls for anyone who has not given themselves over to Jesus Christ to be SAVED to do so by a show of hands while everyone's heads are bowed. Well, I have NEVER, EVER heard of anyone doing an Alter Call during a funeral in my life, and I stole a peek over to WonderHubby and he just had the most perplexed expression on his face, a total WTF??? I proceeded to start to laugh. It began by subtle shaking, and I started to feel tears well up in my eyes and then I had to dessperately try to keep laughter from spilling out amid this totally silent congregation. This was the WRONG TIME for me to get hysterical laughing. I put my hands up over my nose and mouth and hoped that everyone would just think I was crying like the other mourners. Even though there were people staring at me anyway because they hadn't a CLUE who I was and why I would be so distraught over the passing of Miss Mary. But, seriously, here was this Baptist Preacher, now very much on his roll, and my VERY Jewish husband being told to hand his immortal soul to Jesus Christ in the middle of a funeral that he only went to in the first place because he thought I was completely insane, and was no doubt in fear for the life of our infant son, and he's now looking at me like WTF is THIS?? I almost choked myself to death on my own laughter-tears.

Thankfully, I survived the near death experience.