Sweet, Sweet, Music

My mom died in 1999, so why am I thinking about her funeral today? 

Yesterday my friend Ed e-mailed me a joke about a bagpiper. Of course I laughed, because bagpipes are funny. Why?  I don't know; they just are.  That got me thinking about my own bagpipe story, which got me thinking about Mom.

Picture provided by my littlest sister

Before she died, Mom expressed a wish for a bagpiper to play at her funeral. Who EVEN KNOWS a bagpiper? Seriously.  Not me, that's for sure.  I thought she was joking but apparently after I left home the family started attending Highland games and my mother developed a love of the instrument.  So that was that.

Nobody wants to deny their dearly departed mother her dying wish and, miraculously, my sister found someone from a nearby town and hired him. But he got lost on the way.  That really sounds like a set up for a joke but that's what happened.  The funeral went on … no bagpiper.  What are you gonna do, right?

Just as the minister was wrapping up, out of the clear blue sky came the loudest, most horrible squawk I'd ever heard in my life!  It startled me so much that I jumped sky high.  Then I burst out laughing. Because of the noise nobody - except Jerry - heard me.  My shoulders were shaking but Jerry was patting my back, so it looked like I was crying uncontrollably.  The "uncontrollable" part is accurate.  It just wasn't tears. 

At the burial site, the bagpiper stood on a nearby hill and played "Amazing Grace" as they lowered the casket into the earth.  It was haunting.  There wasn't a dry eye among us. 

I still miss my mom and don't think that I would have needed this experience to think of her.  Every time I see a bagpipe though, I re-live her funeral. And, to this very day,  - fifteen years later - I vividly remember that first note. It still sounds like someone choking a very big, very angry bird.

That is why I decided to learn to play the ukulele.

www.StillSwimmingUpstream.com

By Popular Demand

Let's review...

Tuesday I wrote a blog about the worst haircut in my life and what do my friends and family ALL DO?  They ask to see a picture!  I'm not talking about just one or two random people here, I mean my sisters, my neighbors, my closest friends; people that I care about and who I thought cared about me.  Have I spent my entire life surrounded by a bunch of sadists? 

...and am I so masochistic that I'm going to actually post a picture?  Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I am.  No surprises there.  Anything for a laugh.  People, this is a bad haircut.  It deserves to be laughed at.  No one understands that at a gut level better than do I. Okay, so here it is - the picture you've all been waiting for.  The feather on my left side should be on the back of some large, brownish bird not on anyone's head.

Yes, I am wearing a ski cap.  The original photo was in color but I had to change it to black-and-white so you wouldn't be distracted by my flushed cheeks.  It's 76 degrees in the house and I am wearing a winter hat that should, by rights, be in my Norwegian sister-in-law's closet not in mine.  I think I actually bought it for Jerry as a joke.  And now, the joke's on me!  Literally.

My humiliation is complete.  Satisfied, everyone?