It wasn’t the whole funeral, but at my father’s wake, my mother, sister, and I went into the room first to spend a little time together before the crowd came. We looked at Dad’s body in the casket and all three of us had WTF-type facial expressions when we saw his hair. Mom had provided them with photos and he looked good except for the hair, which was in a style he’d probably never worn - I think it was unparted and combed straight down, or something weird like that. We asked the funeral director to get someone to comb it with a part on the side. When we were alone again, we were just numbly chatting about how the hairstyle wasn’t right, and one of us ended up saying that he would probably come back to haunt us if we let them bury him looking like that. It ended up in chuckles and smiles between us, when we’d been very numb for the previous few days. Dad wasn’t vain, but that hair so was not him that we could almost believe that.
While in the Navy I was a member of an honor guard. Our job was to give the 21 gun salute, fold the flag and present it to the widow. There were a few funerals I was glad I was part of the 21 gun salute and wasn’t near the actual graveside service.
An obviously drunk preacher slurring his words and forgetting others. “Asses to Asses, dush to dush…”
The hysterical family member bawling like a baby and flopping on the casket causing it to tilt at a sharp angle and start to slide in the hole. A couple of guys grabbed the casket to keep if from sliding and the lady slid off the end landing in a heap with her dress over her head showing off her pink panties.
The funeral on the top of a hill in a small cemetary, we noticed there was a nice echo from the valley below. The minister conducting the service had a booming voice which echoed very nicely. Soon after he started he became hard to understand because of the echo and began to speak even louder. This of course made the echo louder. A few seconds after the minister finished another voice from somewhere else echoed thoughout the valley, “Bullshit”. Someone snorted. Another giggled. Soon most everyone was laughing. Just as the laughing died down someone in the funeral party said “John would have liked that.” Other agreed.
One of my cousins died from complications from morbid obesity at the age of 57. I don’t know what her weight was, but they had to build an “annex” onto the casket and pay for an extra plot. As she was lowered into the grave, her low-IQ husband asked (in all seriousness), “How will she be able to eat down there?” To which someone answered, “If anyone can find a way to eat down there, she can.” Everyone laughed, except the husband and her mother.
My grandmother’s. A rent-a-Minister conducted the ceremony and not a member of my family knew the Lord’s Prayer. Also, there were quite a few amusing anecdotes involving my grandmother’s declining mental faculties.