Bling It On

Hello folks, let’s chat… Today’s story is about final wishes and it didn’t start out funny. It did, however, end that way, and the one who shared it with me says it grows dearer with each passing year.

Our story begins on the day of a southern matriarch’s funeral. Her grieving daughters went to the funeral home a few minutes early to approve their mother’s appearance for the viewing. Jayne Ann, not her real name, said they were upset to find out she wasn’t wearing earrings. Their mother never went anywhere without her earrings. By now, it was almost time for the service so another family member was dispatched to a nearby drugstore. To the sisters’ horror, the woman returned with a tiny magnetic pair of earrings and an apology– it was all she could do on such short notice. And that’s when the real fun began.

The girls simply could not get those magnetic earrings to stay on their mother’s ear lobes.  The new jewelry kept falling off and disappearing into the casket and into their mama’s clothes. What they didn’t find out until later was that their efforts could be heard in the adjourning room where people were gathering to pay their respects. And it was a most curious conversation to overhear.

“Did it fall in her ear?”

“No. I checked. It may be in her blouse.”

And in the way these kind of things tend to do, the longer the search went on, the funnier it became.  “I’m not checking her brassiere,” one giggler said. “She’d haunt me for sure.”

A short while later the mourners, if you could still call them that, were sitting in the service trying not to think about the missing earrings when one of the sisters leaned over and whispered, “I figured it out. Y’all know Mama despised cheap earrings, right?”

Her sisters knew where she was headed before she ever said it, “Mama wasn’t about to be seen wearing dime-store jewelry for all eternity.”

Final wishes, last words, sometimes they’re one and the same.

Hugs, Shellie