Do you read the obituaries?

I don't know why but I do. I can't wait either. I count the days until the Sunday paper shows up. I section the paper out from the coupons to what I want to read first to last and throw the rest out. I usually clip the coupons first read the juicy stuff second, columns, which is in the local part of the paper. I love peoples dirt and the advise they get which I usually don't agree with cause it's too proper for me. I think Aunt Linda should kick Uncle Herb to the curb for drooling over the hot mess that lives across the street even if she is 90.

I save the best for last. I usually scan the pictures first. I cringe over the young kids if there are any and people who died young. I usually guess they died of cancer or some tragic accident and find myself staring at them a little longer as if it were me in their place. Then there are the old people who look as if they've been here a long time. I especially love it when the family of a passed loved one puts in a picture of when they were young to what they looked like before they passed. Whoa! Beauty does slide south. I start from the left and read to the right all the way down. If it doesn't state the age when they died I count the age by tens on each finger until I get to 2012 to figure out how old they were when they died. I especially like the long obits. The ones that tell their whole life story. Those are the most interesting. By the time I get to the end of a long one I wished I had known them or had them for a grandpa or grandma. I don't like the short ones with no pictures though. Why bother? It just states their name, dates and when and where you can view their body. But I still finger out their age at time of death anyway. Tonight's was sad, she was only 34.

Sadly, in the end when I've read them all I've gotten some strange fulfillment out of reading the obits and I don't why.

Then I read the Funnies.

6 more days till Sunday...

I've never found someone I've known but I do find it strange that some do look familiar to me at times. It's probably my brain putting them in some category of someone they look like that I used to know.

Using them for back stories is great and some of the names are great too. Mrs. Roughds' husband was named Dusty. Classic!

But I often wonder how many times the diseased had a dark past and perhaps could have been a mean person and when they died some of the family felt bad at their passing because of the "potential" of the diseased and wrote only the good things about them. *shruggs* I've witnessed this and to some extent understand why it's done.

For myself I wished someone had told the crowd at my dad's memorial service to not forget to hug his only child on your way out the door, she has a long road ahead of her for what this man did to her. I think I was the Pink Elephant that day in that room.