I've noticed that nobody puts jokes in eulogies.

Yeah, there's a good chance that I'm crazy. But everyone is too busy being sad to put a proper joke inside a eulogy. Maybe every once in a while, there will be the light hearted moment before it goes right back to reminding you, "Hey, this is about some dead dude."

Because Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So is rotting in a coffin while you're making fun of them.

Maybe that has something to do with it. They're gone and all you can do is, well, laugh at them. They can't even respond. They can't think of a clever comeback to your little joke. They can't yell at you, they can't do much about it since they're, you know, dead. Because if they did respond to your little joke, they wouldn't be dead. And there would be no point to a eulogy. And then you'd just feel bad. You'd go on an amazing guilt trip, which I suppose is similar to an acid trip without the happiness. Your guilt trip would lead you to temporary insanity, perhaps even suicide. And then someone will read your eulogy and make a little joke and feel bad about it. And the cycle will start all over here. People will be dying left and right and it will be your fault, it'll be all your fucking fault because you thought you'd be a clever little fucker and right a eulogy that made fun of the dead. Show some fucking respect.

But I suppose that's what it's all about. Respect. And if you don't show respect to the people who have passed before you then congratulations, you just might be a bad person. Maybe, if you're lucky, someone will hate you for it.

It's just interesting what the dead will do for you.

Take this for an example. I was eight years old, my parents were separated, and I found out that I was going to be moving out of my hometown to go live in a little harbor town a half hour away.

And then my uncle died.

And you know what happened?

That eight year old girl that used to be me, that sick fuck found something to be optimistic about.

She thought her parents would fall in love with each other all over again out of fucking pity. My sick and twisted little mind whispered that maybe, just maybe, Mommy would feel bad for Daddy because his brother had just died from a random heart attack. She'd feel sorry for him and hug him and kiss him, and I wouldn't have to move away anymore. I wouldn't have to go to a new house and a new bedroom and meet the new guy who would later become my step dad.

I remember the day clearly. It was a weekend. Maybe. Or it may have been a school day. Maybe. This is irrelevant, actually. I just remember waking to my mom coming to sit on the edge of my bed. Before I even had time to react to the abrupt wake-up-call, she said, "Brittany, I have some bad news."

And I say, "Huh?" because when you're eight years old and barely waking up, the only words that come to mind are the ones that don't even exist. And my first thoughts were, "my dad died" which would have been a worst-case scenario, being that I could already rule out my mom and my sister. Courtney, six years old and as ridiculously cute as I can remember, stood in the doorway, tears in her eyes. Our golden retriever puppy, Dippidy, followed suit. And it was as if that dog knew that something was wrong because she sat there, blatantly staring into my bedroom. They both already knew, the sister and the dog; they both already knew, whatever it was.

My dad didn't die.

But my uncle did.

The woman there, so much younger than she is now, she said: "Uncle Jordan passed away this morning."

If I were mature enough at that time, I would have thought "Well, how the fuck did that happen?"

But instead of saying or doing anything, I said "Oh."

I don't remember if I even cried at that moment. I cried at the funeral, at least, I think I did. When your eight years old and too young to realize that your family is slowly falling apart, you cry because you have no reason to, because you know they're never coming back. When you're little, you cry because you're supposed to be sad. And I recall sometime later that morning, I was in my mom's bathroom brushing my hair and I smiled.

Mommy, that son of a bitch, she says: "What are you laughing about?"

And I say: "For some reason, that song 'Eat It' by Weird Al got stuck in my head."

She says: "You know, that's perfectly normal. When you're upset, you think of something that makes you laugh because you don't want to cry."

And that sick little eight year old girl, who I used to be, she said "Okay."

Don't even fucking blink back a fucking tear.

Don't you fucking dare.

And for the first time since I could remember, we actually sat at the table and had breakfast. My dad drove over from his apartment a block over and sat with us while we munched on Apple Jacks. And he, for the first time that I could remember, had tears in his eyes. And good old Mommy did too. And I'm thinking, "Hey, maybe they still have something in common."

Yeah, you and the rest of the fucking world. Most people cry when people die. And to this day, I've tried my hardest to get the tear ducts working. Because I'm not crying for the lifeless body in the front of the room, that makes me a bad person. The room, the world, they're crying because a life has been lost. And me, I try my hardest and I can't cry. The reality of the situation hits me a week later and I still can't cry. It's not the death that upsets me, I've noticed. I see the pink walls and the dull carpet, the daisies lined up next to that coffin, that home for your loved one to rot and decay; I count the tiles in the ceiling before I realize I'm the only person in the room that knows there's even a ceiling there, a ceiling with tiles and interesting patterns. And then I see the loved ones, my family, the ones who are still alive and making good use of their lungs, and I cry because they're in pain over the corpse at the head of the room.

Because my uncle's funeral was just a priceless omen. From there on in, death after death, funeral after funeral, and I don't fucking cry anymore. Or maybe everyone's too busy shedding a fucking tear to realize that I can't do it. And I don't know why.

Maybe I've just been programmed this way.

Maybe it's inherited. I've seen this before.

And it almost makes me angry.

My dad works in a pharmacy, and he's one of those guys that everybody loves and respects because he knows how to appeal to the world. Only the people closest to him can find something about him they don't like, and even that's not enough. Living fucking proof that being a people-person will get you far in life.

And this man, he has customers who buy their drugs and then get old and die. And with disdain, Daddy says he's going to the funeral to pay his respects, show his face, and then leave. All with a shrug and a look of disgust masked with a nonchalant attitude. "Whatever." People die, it just doesn't matter as long as you don't love them.

Just show your face at the funeral. Let the family know you were there. Just like that, you're a better person. If you don't have to be there, then you don't have to cry. That's the fair deal here, because you don't have to cry and you still manage to look good in front of semi-strangers who just might send you a fruit basket for Christmas if you made the right impression.

Maybe I should do that. I'll win Heaven points and all, just for showing up and showing my face and making everybody think I care when instead, I'm really paying my respects to my own reputation. You can just fucking call me Marla Singer and maybe if I'm lucky, I'll be able to sleep at night.

It happened again a few years ago. Not as big a deal as my uncle's death, but it still happened. This is years later, years after my uncle's death, years after my mother's remarriage and divorce, years after having her own son with my ex-step dad, years after my father's happy remarriage, years after my two step sisters joined the family as well with my dad's remarriage, years after my dad and step mom had a baby girl of their own. Courtney, now thirteen, had a birthday party to go to during that December weekend, and I was the only child, next to the aforementioned two year old baby girl, named Taylor, who was able to accompany my dad and step mom on our journey to our vacation house in Vermont.

And it was any old weekend. Get up there Friday night. Order appetizers from a local restaurant. Sit in the living room, watching stand up comedy. Go to sleep. Wake up. Go ski. Eat lunch. Keep skiing. Go back home. Change, shower. Play video games or go to the development's recreational center and play wolleyball. Go back home. Go out to dinner. Go back home and watch a movie. Go to sleep. Wake up. Eat breakfast. Pack your bags, we're fucking going home!

But that weekend, we didn't leave until later on, so the five hour car ride ended sometime later. And after my dad drops me back off at my mom's house, how am I to think anything's wrong when I walk in and get no answer from my family?

I say: "Mom? Court?" I get no answer, so I drop my things off in my room. I turn around to drop my bag, turn back around to face the door, and just like that, Court's standing in the doorway, looking at me with a similar expression to the one I'd seen nearly eight years ago.

"Hey," I'd said, and she just looks at me and says, "Come into Mom's room."

That's not good.

Because when my mom forces us to come into her room (she usually tries to keep us out, not that we listen anyway), it either means we're about to be told something important, we're about to get yelled at, or we're about to receive birthday presents. And I automatically ruled out the last one because if my birthday had suddenly changed to a different time of the year, I sure as hell didn't know about it.

Court says, "Sit down."

And I say: "Dippidy." And she nods.

Because my beloved golden retriever had been sick with a kidney infection her whole life. She had spent her last months unable to move, staying as stationary as possible. She wasn't even an old dog. In my mind, she was still a puppy.

And again, I couldn't cry.

I knew she was never coming back, that I would never be able to pet her again. And for a moment, it hit me and I cried. For a moment. And within minutes, the moment was gone, I was back to my usual self. I went to sleep that night, I went to school the next day, I kept living.

I still don't know whether or not that's a good thing.

A year later, things were different. It wasn't something as trivial as losing your dog. Things just happen the way they do. Again, it was right before Christmas. And now, I'm beginning to wonder if there's some sort of pattern in all this. My uncle, right before summer vacation. My dog, right before Christmas, and another death the following year, right before Christmas. And then, after that, yet another death in the family right before my own birthday.

I just may be cursed.

Just maybe.

But I remember the movie theater, I remember Stefania, our au pair, taking me and Courtney and Dylan to the movies to see the new Harry Potter movie. And I remember coming home and our mother was crying. And I was thinking, "Great, what the fuck did she do this time?" Because it's just like that, it's just like me to expect that "the worst" is her making another mistake.

And Courtney guesses the right answer first, shes asks: "Grandpa?" And that's all she has to say before we're enveloped in our mother's arms, them crying hysterically, me being completely unsure about what had just happened.

I don't remember sleeping that night.

The wake was one disaster after another, with the jealousy of staring at every tear drop that you see coming out of your family's eyes. The scenario is still fresh in my memory. Grandma's crying her eyes out because they were so close to making it to their fiftieth anniversary, because she now feels like she has no one, and Mommy is crying and conversing and cursing at everything and everyone. Someone says "What a tragedy," but yet I wonder if it really is a tragedy considering he was an old man who had been sick for over ten years. And then I wondered if everyone said that at every funeral. Everyone dies before their time, but only according to everyone else. Everyone has something nice to say to the dead, but if they have something shitty to share about them, they just don't say anything at all.

Automatically, the dead become nice people. They become heros. You don't appreciate them when they're alive because they're real. And once they're not, reality becomes the surreal, reality becomes memory and you're done falsifying the truth into what a great person your dead family member actually was.

I'm not saying my Grandpa wasn't a good person. I'm not saying that at all. But what bothers me more than death itself, with the fact that I can't seem to cry, is the fact that lives become fabricated bits of heroism as soon as an innocent person, a person with no criminal record, dies of sudden or natural causes. "This girl was hit by a drunk driver and though both the girl and the drunk driver died in the crash, he's the villain and she's the hero because he was driving drunk and she was seventeen and had her whole life ahead of her." Read in between the lines, and that's what the headline really says. They're not going to tell you that the girl who died was a slutty pothead who went out on Friday nights to get wasted and spread her STD's. No, that's too real for you to admit to the world, it's too real for you to acknowledge if someone has died.

I'm just sickened with the false pretenses that funerals seem to give. When I die, I don't want my sister standing in front of my coffin saying, "Oh, Brittany, she was such a good person, she was such a sweetheart and I couldn't have asked for a better sister." True or not, I'd rather her say: "I guess she was cool, but she could be a real bitch. And she was so random all the time, I mean sometimes it was funny, but other times it was just annoying. Like I seriously sometimes wondered if she was some kind of fucking idiot." This would have to be edited of course. You can't say "fuck" in a eulogy.

I'm just saying, the difference between life and death is reality versus dream. Life is real, death is a mystery. But once death meets life, life becomes a dream too, a false story of our best efforts. And then, just like that, they're forgotten. For a glorious hour, the world thinks that you are something great while they're mourning you, and then they move onto the next coffin and worship the next dead person who lived the life of perfection, the dead person who had the heart of gold. Then again, I'd rather be not remembered at all than be remembered for something horrible, although I probably wouldn't mind so much if my sister called me a bitch at my funeral. I'd probably roll over in my grave, not from anxiety, but from laughter.

Because you can be afraid of death. But if you keep asking yourself what you have to be afraid of, you soon realize that you're afraid of everything. And then, life and death both become the pointless matter which you feared too much to understand.

And then it becomes a matter of faith. Because a mere few weeks after my grandpa passed, my mom came into my room with more news.

"Grandma is sick."

That's all it was. As it turns out, Grandma was suffering from Stage 4 cancer that had gone undetected for years. It was not until after her husband's death that her symptoms began to show. And just like that, we were visiting her house every week, slowly watching as her body slowly deteriorated and her hair fell out in curly strands of gray hair.

And it was interesting because a week before she died, I was with my friends. There was a group of us situated on the trampoline in my friend's backyard on that spring night.

One of them says to me: "We're going to the beach tomorrow, are you and Court coming?"

Court says: "We can't, we're visiting our Grandma tomorrow."

He responds with: "Skip going to Grandma's and come hang out with us!"

And I say: "She's dying."

And the conversation ends there. I don't recall if my friend felt bad about saying that, but I do remember thinking about it. There were no apologies. It was just acceptance. There was not much time and the only thing my sister and I were able to do about it was visit her until her time was up.

And ironically enough, that next day that we visited her was the last time we ever saw her alive. And to this day I think if I had been stupid enough to listen to my friends and blow off visiting my sickly grandmother, I would have never gotten the proper chance to say goodbye before she died a few days later.

It was interesting, to be back at the funeral home again at a time so soon. It was the same people, the same crowd who had been at my grandfather's wake four months earlier. This time, it was the same people, only with the replacement of the corpse at the head of the room and the fact that instead of my grandmother crying hysterically at the loss of her husband, it was my grandmother's sister crying at the loss of her baby sister.

And I remember looking at my mom, my aunt, and my uncle, the once tightly-knit bunch who had slowly turned their faces away from each other, away from each other and towards the graves of their parents. Orphans now, but all adults with their own lives. Both of their parents gone within four months of each other. Grandpa right before Christmas, Grandma right before my birthday.

And now, writing this, Christmas is in three days and no one has died yet, which would mean that the pattern of the past few years may have ended. And it scares me to think that so quickly, the lives of your loved ones could be gone. My own death doesn't frighten me as much as the possible pain before it does. But to see the people I love disappear before my very eyes, that's what hurts most of all.

My weakness may be the deaths of those who surround me, the lives I depend on to save my own. But weakness may not be depicted by tears, and I've learned that the hard way.

Every eulogy we write may be the respect we give to a loved one, but it is never so much as respecting the life itself.

Because everyone is going to die eventually. The question is when. Look at the people around you and know that one day, they are going to be in a coffin at the front of a room too. Look at them, your teachers, your friends, the empty faces that you couldn't care less about that you pass every day in work or in school. And then remember that one day, that will be you. And someone will write your eulogy and tell you about how great you are, to remind everyone that your life was worth something. No one realizes that this eulogy, this reminder of your greatness should only be important to yourself. Because you are the only one that will benefit from knowing the extent of your greatness, and it really is too bad that a eulogy depicts that only after you are dead and it is too late to develop further on what others have to say about you.

It's too late to realize that these pages are your eulogy too.