The Wrong Funeral aka one of my most embarrassing moments. EVER!!

One of the things I said on my 'tag' was that I had gone to the wrong funeral. Well some of you have e-mailed me out of curiosity asking me how on Gods green earth this could have happened. So I am baring my shame to you all and will share the story. Pull up a chair, get comfy and have a read - you will probably have never heard anything like it before in your lives (and probably won't again).

What happened is this …. And I swear this is all true (well you couldn’t make it up to be honest!!)

My ex’s dad died – we never really got on that well. Anyway on the morning of the funeral, he (the ex) went over to Liverpool really early to make sure his mum was ok (lovely lady btw). Well he said to me that they were leaving the house at 12.30pm, see you later etc etc and off he went.. So me and my youngest set off later, in good time and although we hit traffic on the way, we arrived at the house at 12.20pm. Only to find that the house bore a strange resemblance to the Marie Celeste.

Well we didn’t know what to do cos we didn’t know where the funeral was. So I am going ‘think Dawny think’ and generally bashing myself on the head a lot in the style of Basil Fawlty. But sadly, nothing (there is still not a lot there now lol xx). So I grabbed a random pedestrian and sort of said ‘excuse me please, do you know where the nearest cemetery is?’ Surprisingly he didn’t run away!!!. He told me the name of it and I sort of then vaguely remembered it from the obituary notice I’d read in the paper. He gave me directions and off we went.

Bearing in mind this is Liverpool and I don’t really know the area, we did really well and found it without too much bother. So we drove through the gates and just kept driving round but all we could see were graves. Of course this isn’t rush hour in the city, so there was a bit of a shortage of alive people to ask for further directions. But eventually we find someone and asked him. He told us that the cemetery was split into 2 – this was the graveyard bit and we needed the crematorium. ‘Fab’ I says, ‘where is it please?’. ‘Over the other side of the road’. What he didn’t say was the road was a ruddy great dual carriage way and getting over it was easier said than done. But no matter, off we went and eventually crossed the road, found the car park and got out.

Well by now my face was puce, my hair was sticking to my head so I looked like an advert for shampoo for greasy hair (the ‘before’ bit of course), and rivers of sweat are running off me so despite the copious amounts of Sure Deodorant that I had put on earlier, it did let me down and quite frankly I must have whiffed a fair bit!!. But never mind all that, I thought, we got here and that’s all that counts. So we see a line of people and in the distance, a hearse making its way slowly up the drive. So I grabbed my poor child (11 at the time - it isn’t a good age to be embarrassed by your dippy mother) and ran up to join this queue of people. Mustering as much dignity as I could manage (which quite frankly by now was not very much) we stood there in respectful silence and waited for the hearse.

As we waited, I looked around and suddenly realised that I didn’t know single soul – not one face!!. I began to get the first fluttering of panic and that sick feeling in my stomach. My eyes were like on stalks and a look of sheer horror crossed my puce face. As calmly and as naturally as I could, I turned to this man standing next to me and asked, this is John Smiths funeral isn’t it. (name changed to protect the dead lol xx). ‘No’ he says, ‘it’s random name random names funeral’ (I cannot remember the name now – the stress has wiped it from my memory bank). OMG we are at the wrong funeral I says to poor Emma who is by now mortified and thoroughly ashamed of me. So I says to him ‘but this is Spring Wood Crematorium isn’t it?’. ‘Oh yes love, but here are 2 here, back to back. Try the other side’. So we ran, nay sprinted round to where he had showed us. The good news was that it WAS the right place. But the BAD news was that it had started. And despite the undertaker saying it was fine, I was too embarrassed to gate crash - it would have been very wrong. And by now I was thinking that as the deceased hadn’t liked me very much, perhaps he was trying to tell me something from beyond the grave. Something along the lines of ‘stay away!’. So we waited outside, shamefaced, and embarrassed.

The family were very good about it and it isn’t why the ex and I split up. He maintained to the day we parted that he had told me 12.15pm, and I maintained that he didn’t!!!. For a long time I couldn’t even think about it without breaking into a cold sweat. But I can laugh about it now.

So now you know. It could only happen to me. Hope you enjoyed my shameful moment xxxx