A few months or years after I met him for the first and only time, my great-grandfather died. I
was not sad because he was a complete stranger that I had met one
time. As they were organizing the funeral they thought it would be
nice to have one of his grandsons sing his favorite song at the
funeral. None would. They decided to try for great-grandkids but the
way my great aunt wanted it she wanted a soloist to sweetly sing the
verse and the other kids sing the chorus. No one else would agree to
sing solo so I volunteered with the caveat that I was not a good
singer. I wasn't, and I wasn't being modest like my great aunt
thought I was just always willing to volunteer, as I have mentioned
before. I was not really sure what I had volunteered for but my
siblings and I got dressed in our Sunday best and went to the funeral
home for a quick run-through. I was supposed to stand a little in
front of the other kids and sing into the microphone and then they
would join in without individual mics. The run through demonstrated
my horrible lack of musical ability but it was too late and my
unsubtle great aunt open lamented my lack of talent and that she
wished I would have been better. They had some talks and comments and
then it was our turn. Not many people were there and only a few were
crying, but it was the reserved sadness of those morning a
nonogenarian they barely knew. My singing was so bad, almost
comically so, that I noticed that many people stopped crying to fully
dedicate their faculties to witnessing this abomination. Well, the
best news was that it was over soon and like a healing salve I was
able to dry the tears of those who mourned by the pure white hot
horror of my amplified auditory assault. I was not even praised in
the perfunctory manner customary of recognition for any job done by a
child. I guess praise was too far from what the performance deserved
and the cognitive dissonance that would have been created may have
ripped the fabric of the social-courtesy continuum. I have never been
asked to sing in any solo capacity since.
