Digging Up Grandma - Long and Off Topic
Just remember that some of you asked for this.
It all started when Candy went screaming out of the funeral home. I chased out the door after her, certain that Grandma must have sat upright in the casket to get such a response out of my normally level-headed sister. As it turns out, Grandma was wearing pink lipstick. Grandma never wore pink lipstick. She wore bright red, fire engine red lipstick. A lipstick shade had set the girl off. Candy had been a little quirky where Grandma was concerned ever since she ran Grandma over outside the beauty shop with her old, beat up Monte Carlo, but that's a story for another day. It did inspire us to make up our own versions of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer for many Christmases to come.
The funeral itself went off without a hitch. We're a stoic bunch so there wasn't too much wailing and flailing at the graveside. We headed back to Grandma's for the after burial festivities. Everything was going well until I realized that Candy was missing. I found her in the garage with a pack of wine coolers and a shovel.
"Candy, what are you doing?"
"I'm going to dig up Grandma and put her back in her chair."
"OK, you've been drinking so I'll drive. Let's go."
We grabbed Cindy, our other sister and headed out to the cemetery. Cindy, the earth-mother, sat in the backseat in her long, cotton dress and huarache sandals. Candy, the fashion plate, part-time model, sat in the front seat and hung her head out the window as we made our way through the Illinois countryside. Grief is sometimes closely tied to anger and Candy decided that anger was just as good as any other emotion right then. As I drove down a country road, Candy started to verbally abuse the cows that were peacefully grazing on the side of the road. Pretty soon the earth-mother in the back joined in and the cows were being cussed out in stereo. By the time we got to the cemetery, they were hoarse from screaming obscenities.
We sat on Grandma's grave and drank wine coolers for a while. Before long, Candy decided she was too tired and drunk to dig so we headed home.
By the time we got back to the house, everyone else had left and my husband Dan and Candy's husband Joe were sitting behind a tall pyramid of empty beer cans saying, "Courage, courage" in their best Cowardly Lion voices. Joe would later leave Candy and his job as a supervisor at Capital Records for his own first cousin and a job cleaning a McDonald's parking lot, but again, that's another story and one that I tried for years to get Candy to tell on the Sally Jessy Raphael show so we could get a free trip to New York.
We sat down to play cards and reminisce about Grandma. One thing led to another and somehow, we decided that Grandma needed a No Parking sign to mark her grave so we headed out with Dan into the night to steal one. We found one near the high school football field and tried to unbolt it from the pole. We took turns trying to hold each other up to undo the bolts and soon found that the pole wasn't that firmly planted in the ground. OK, we found this out when the earth-mother fell down on my head and the pole moved. Well, why bother with just the sign when you can take the pole too. Never mind the big chunk of concrete at the bottom. Dan was a national wrestling champion and as strong as an ox. He rocked and pulled on that damned sign until he worked the whole thing out of the soft ground. We each hung onto a piece of the pole and took off running for home. Dan was in the lead with the heavy concrete end followed by Candy, Cindy and then me. Did I mention that Dan was blind? Picture this, one blind, drunk guy leading the way with three drunken women behind him shouting directions. Don't ask me how, but we made it back to the house without doing too much damage to anything except a tree and without getting arrested.
So here's the thing about me and my sisters... When we get together, we usually end up laughing so hard that we wet our pants. This night was no different. We're all laughing hysterically as we come in the door and Candy makes a mad dash down the dark hall to the bathroom. She runs nose first into the closed bathroom door at full speed. She hit the door so hard that she bounced off, landed on her butt and wet her pants on the floor. She was doing that laugh/cry thing so hard that she got me going and I wet my pants, which set Cindy off and she wet her earth-mother dress.
Candy decided that it was time to take her soggy butt home to feed her dogs Ernie and Bert. Since none of us were in any shape to drive, we called a cab. Cindy stood in the middle of the road, waving the skirt of her dress back and forth, partially to flag down the cab and partially to dry it out. The cab driver came to a halt in front of her and Candy climbed into the backseat. As the cab rolled away, I could hear Candy in the backseat, "Now no funny business. Take the shortest route and don't look at me in the mirror. Hey, do you go to the cemetery?"
I'd like to be adopted into your sisterhood. I am also buying the rights to turn this into a screenplay. Kathy Bates, Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler...I can see it now, as their names are announced at the Academy Awards -- "I'd like to thank Connie Leon for being the funniest woman on earth..." Love you HUGE, Reenie
holy crap I am laughing my @ss off! LOL
too funny!
nic 
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