"Sometimes Le Cigar is just Le Cigar".

My great grandma MJ just died of cancer at the age of 93. My sister and I went to the showing, but my mother is in FL enjoying the waves of IKE so we had to go alone.



We knew it would be awkward but had no idea what was coming.

We walk in and there is only 15 people there. (All the showing's I have been to there is a line out the door. )

We walk towards the caskett and see my great aunt Joyce, she says Hello, and hugs us. We then turn to the husband (who is dying of Lung cancer, even when I was little I would annoying shout to him every Christmas, your going to die if you don't stop smoking! Apparently my parents never taught me restraint, I still haven't got it). The husband says Are you the one who used to pester me all the time? (He was Santa Claus and since I was told from 1 year old that he wasn't real, I was even more interested in him than most children).

Yes, I say, I did pester you all the time....

I thought so, he says, what's your names? We say that we are Cathy's daughters, Angie, and Lisa. He still doesn't recongize us. We stand there awkwardly looking at the caskett, and I am so proud of my sister because she has this odd fear of people in casketts, she can't stand to look at them. But she did. We then saw pictures across the room and the only Aunt who I knew would recongize us, so we walked over.

She exclaims, "There are my two girls!" Which is odd, since she married into the family and he is now dead, but she even came to my grandmothers funeral (and the family never gets together because of the constant fights they've had). Either way it was nice, that 1 person in our family knew our names. We look at the pictures and then see a group of people that I thought would know who we are. We walk over. Hello, we say. They stare blankly. One aunt says, uh, Ca-- Cat-Cathy's girls? Yes we say. We stand there. I ask, "How are you Debbie"? "Good", she replies. Silence. I look to Fred, possibly the fattest man alive. He once broke the seat at our town theater and it's never been fixed in 20 years. He smiles back waves, I can't explain it, but I gave the most awkward wave back, but he was half not looking. Debbie was and started to giggle. I had enough at this point. I say, "It's been good to see all of you, but we have to get going".

Annoyed we walk to the exit. I see Aunt Anita, whom I lived next door to, She hugs us. We talk. I ask how her family is. I loved her, because she had 2 sons, I babysat for and all she had to do was count to 2 and the kids would stop being bad. That's the kinda kid I'm going to have. She takes us to her family, her husband Nick, looks at us blankly. He stares at us for 5 minutes while we talk to his wife. Nick then looks to my sister and says Lisa, What have you been up to? (Her name is Angie.) I point to myself, and say "I'm Lisa." He laughs, oh sorry. I say its, "ok. We look exactly the same (except my sister has gained 50 pounds) but we've been getting it all night. Only Aunt Betty knew our names, and we've seen her less than all of you." I then mumble how pathetic this family is. I angerly say that we have to get going.



We decide that since the night has been so horrible, we are going to our old favorite Chinese place we used to go to as kids.



My sister had already taken off the next morning to go to the funeral. But since I wasn't going she decided she couldn't go through it alone. So she didn't go. But told her bosses she did.