313, Represent

Right after I took The Buzz to task for dissing Detroit, I ended up journeying there myself last week for my stepgrandmother's funeral. The big concern chez Bravermundo lately has been whether or not we all have appropriate funeral attire; we knew Dad was covered with a dark suit, but the rest of us were struggling. Erica and I talked the night before our flights and discussed what we needed to bring:
Me: You'll need a purse for temple.
Erica: Temple purse. (To give you a sense of how hilarious this was, please imagine my sister saying this in her most serious voice. Still not funny to you? What, packing for a funeral isn't funny?)

I think Helen--a woman whose closet contained at least 75 pairs of shoes, in their original boxes, with notations on each box like "gold flats with bow"--would've appreciated our attention to detail. I think she would've understood when we sneaked out of the mourning house and went to the nearby Somerset Collection (Note to malls that refuse to call themselves malls: just because you have a Saks and a Louis Vuitton store does not mean that you are not a mall. I know it places you in downmarket company, but let's call a spade a spade. Or a mall a mall.) and bought Wolford tights and carried on like we'd never seen a Sephora before.

Jews don't send flowers, they send food, and I think I forgot what a vegetable looks like over the weekend, so intent was I on finding the best tray at every gathering. I got a little too intimate with a chocolate-dipped fruit tray (white chocolate covered raspberries!) and ate more bagels and lox than one girl should be able to handle.

I realized my four-year-old cousin desperately needs me in her life, as her mother is Totally Unglamorous (not to mention tactless, mean and shrill), while she is total Pink Sparkle Glitter Sticker Princess. We discovered that we can both touch our tongues to our noses, and I made sure I had plenty of stickers to share every time I saw her. (This is how my grandfather ended up with a Clifford sticker on his walker. Chic, no?)

We saw the Cousins We Never See (this is what happens when you have stepgrandparents), who've matured into a group of fine young men. The youngest, a senior in high school, was sporting a trucker cap when we saw him first, so he became Julian (yes, as in That Julian) which was an endless source of amusement to Erica and me all weekend. After the funeral, Julian was nowhere to be found, and we were hiding out on the steps up to the bedrooms, scoping out the scene downstairs (the only cute guy had a wedding band, of course) and watching boys go in and out of one of the rooms. Erica and I looked at each other with narrowed eyes, "They are totally getting high up there and they didn't invite us." At that point, our mom came out of the room and we were like, "Mom got high?" and then she told us that she made a new friend, Julian, because he knits. So my mom and Julian had been sequestered in his room, knitting, while all his high school buddies came by to say hi.

And I finally got to try Ginger Altoids. And I missed a screaming fight between my dad and his crazy sister. And I got to see my favorite cousin, Lamb Boy, and his tiny sweet wife. And I couldn't cry all weekend, even though the thought of my grandfather alone, with my insane aunt bossing him around, has been giving me agita since I first thought of it.