Don't Wake the Cade Sisters'

Three of the Four Cade Sisters

Sissy and I stood in front  of McVeigh's Funeral Home and eyed each other.

 "After you, Sissy," I said, waving her ahead.

 I figured she'd get the initial  blast of funeral parlor smell, that familiar but unsettling odor that curls up your nose, triggering for us, an avalanche of atypical funeral home memories.
And like all of the family wakes we've attended, we headed straight to the restroom to freshen up and do the pre-wake pow-wow.

Sissy lowered her head; her big brown eyes peeked over her funky glasses and warned me like only a big sister can.

"You'd better not laugh,” she said. "I'll kill you."

See Sissy and I have a little problem when it come to burying people.

We laugh.

It started with Great Uncle Snook Stangel and his cowboy hat.

Great Uncle Snook was married to Myrtle, a lively wide faced freckled woman three times his size. Her raucous laugh could crack a hundred double pained windows. The more Manhattans she downed, the louder she grew. Her infectious laugh would blow through the room like a giant gust of wind. And she made the best lip licking shrimp remoulade this side of Louisiana.

Like most people, Snook shrunk as he aged; losing what seemed like a good foot during the last few decades. Or maybe he was always that small. We Cade's are big boned can-do gals so we felt like Amazon wrestlers next to him. Snook was so tiny that he needed a booster seat when he motored round the city in his big three-ton tank of a Buick. He would sit on a tufted pillow, his little white head looking like the rising moon over the dashboard.

So when we got the call that Snook had passed on, there was a big "to do" because Snook was cremated and the Stangel's get buried, not scattered. But Snook was a white haired renegade and did what he damn well pleased and when we walked into the funeral home, Snook was resting inside an elegant and stately vase, fit for a giant.

But the trouble started when Sissy and I walked up to pay our respects to Great Uncle Snook. On the pedestal, next to Snook in the Vase, was a picture of him with a giant cowboy hat on. That damn hat just about swallowed Snook and if you know our family, we do not have an ounce of cowboy blood in our bodies.

And we don't wear cowboy hats.

That's when the Cade Sisters' lost control. Something about that big cowboy hat and Great Uncle Snook in the Vase triggered something primal.

And it wasn't pretty. 

We're not proud of our juvenile behavior that day. In fact, we were downright embarrassed, but since the Cade Sisters' have an aberrant acting gene floating around in our DNA pool, and while the rest of the Stangel's were overcome with grief, or catching up on the latest church gossip, no one seemed to notice that the we were howling as we stood in front of Great Uncle Snook's remains.

It's a good thing the Stangel's have bad hearing and eyesight.

Snook's cowboy hat started a pattern of bad burial behavior that continues to this day. And always begins with a stern warning from Sissy who seems to have very selective funeral home memories.

There was the Great Aunt Rally Debacle where my nephew, who may be following in his Aunty's giant footsteps, joined me as we walked up to pay our respects. As we knelt  down before Rally, I felt it coming, like a runaway train, building speed as my knees made contact with the prayer bench. Once it begins, it is simply unstoppable. Our eyes met in a cockeyed sideways glance. And it started. As I buried my head in my hands, my impressive shoulders shook. I begged Rally for help. Even Snook. Called upon God, Buddha, Allah, and Zeus.

But no one answered my distress call.

Sissy wouldn't pair up with me because she knew I'd jump over that thin line that separates grief from laughter. She was relieved that it was me this time, not her.

We recently returned from New York where we buried the last of the Greats- Uncle Len. Bless him, at 88, he was the baby of the family, and was our favorite Uncle. And throughout the four hour car journey Sissy reminded me that I had better not laugh.

"Behave yourself," Sissy warned.

"Hey, it's not always me," I sassed back.

"You started at Snook's," I reminded her.

"You did at Rally's," she said.

So as usual, we made a beeline straight to the ladies room for the pre wake pep talk. The Stangel's previous funeral home, Frederick’s ,was much nicer, plus they gave away those plastic nail files that you could push up and down, making a wonderfully addictive zipper-like noise. We still can't figure out why those skin color nail files were the funeral parlor rage, particularly since the metal tip was so damn sharp and who wants to pull out a file with a funeral home's logo plastered all over?

We paid our respects to Len, standing over the open casket, without any hints of laughter. No smiles, no side glances, no funny breathing sounds,no shaking shoulders. We didn't say he looked good, because well, he didn't and whoever caked on his makeup has a lot to answer for when they meet up with Marge Stangel.

Had we matured since the last family funeral? Had we finally outgrown the wicked bereavement behaviors? Cracked the Cade Curse? Would we finally be able to get through a wake or funeral without falling apart?

But then the priest walked in.

And all hell broke loose.

The thickly accented Priest called him Leo instead of Len. If their outrage was measurable, that side of the family would be multimillionaires. Heads turned, tongues clucked, but the little priest carried on with a wide smile stumbling over the virtues of a guy named Leo.

And that's when Sissy bowed her head, and her shoulders started to shake, like the rumblings of a great volcano.  Mount St. Sissy. Her face wasn't red; it was aubergine.  She was suppressing the monster of all laughs. Luckily, we Cade Sisters' realize our limitations and always park our behinds in the back row so Sissy got up, head bowed, her hands covering her eyes and walked out.

I knew Sissy wasn't grieving. In fact, I thought I heard the faint echo of a gasping laugh coming from the restroom.

Don't get me wrong. We love our extended family and these funerals are difficult for us particularly since we've lost the Greats in our family, a wildly eclectic, kooky bunch of  Stangel's. And we hate that we break out in laughter. But somehow, I think, the Greats are looking down at us, shaking their collective white heads, their soft blue eyes twinkling with delight. Because if there was one thing the Stangels' appreciated most, it was a good laugh.