5 Days.  2,000 Miles.  The Funeral.Tuesday, July 3.  Still.Streams, wooded hills, mansions, manicured fields surrounded by perfectly maintained fences; a nationally distributed beer is manufactured in this affluent rural community.  The church is picturesque, traditional, iconic: white clapboard and a steeple, a small park-like cemetery out behind.  It is a perfect summer day, sunny, temperate, tiny breezes, a beautiful day to remember Aunt Nellie. An Episcopal church, so perhaps the service will be more on the liberal side.No such luck.A teenage girl in a white choir robe, the priest’s daughter, plays the piano.  Slowly, so she won’t make mistakes, but also expressionless – she doesn’t know the tunes well enough to phrase them with any soul.  It’s pretty, but stale.  People talk quietly until the liturgy begins.  My parents aren’t so used to navigating the prayer book, so I find pages for them.  They are well acquainted with the hymns:  How Great Thou Art.  Amazing Grace. Typical small town singing; the pianist’s inexperience shows in the song-leading as well, if only she would breathe with us. Dad caterwauls them in his best monotone when he isn’t too overcome with emotion.I notice these things because I need something to distract me from the liturgy, from the Jesus, from the heaven and hell, from the wretched fairy tales I know they’re going to offer as comfort to the grieving (and that will truly comfort the majority of those present) but is only going to dredge up for me everything I hate about Christianity.It is time for the Eulogy – John walks up to the pulpit with the photo album his daughter put together.  Somehow he is able to talk about his mother, his memories of her, of her legacy to him without tears or a break in his voice.  He does however, make me wince with multiple “praise the Lords” and “she’s dancing before the Lord now” (a reference to the amputation she recently suffered from advanced diabetes).  I can’t look at him.  Others are invited to stand up and share memories.  Janie is one of the first to rise.  She has done this at other funerals, Mom is wishing Janie would pay more attention to her appearance, I’m holding my breath.  To her credit she is not maudlin, nor does she go on and on.  It’s a recently learned skill for her; I breathe a sigh of relief – Janie is handling this one well so far.Cousin Brenda, one of Nellie’s nieces, tells the story of the time Aunt Nellie trapped her in the kitchen, not letting her leave until she figured out how to bake a loaf of banana bread.  It was her way of teaching Brenda to think for herself.  Joe, one of Nellie’s sons, tells of the time his mother told him to lose his pride and get the damn food stamps, he had a wife and child to feed.  He did, and shortly thereafter found a job.  The stories go on, outlining the presence of a woman who simply was who she was, who loved her family, and who loved to laugh.When there are no more reminisces from the congregation the priest continues in the liturgy with his homily.  This, to my dread, is one of the more conservative Christian types of Episcopal, sounding much more like the 700 Club than the Anglican church in which I have sometimes sung.  I cope as best I can: stare at my lap, hands concealed in my pockets, middle fingers extended.  Enough about where she is, why can’t anyone say we loved her, we miss her, we’re sad, it hurts, we cherish the memory of her and the place she had in our lives?  And leave it at that?Amazing Grace ends the service, that dreadful wretched song, which is so burned into my consciousness that I can sing all the words by memory, that no matter how hard I try to translate it into meanings that I can live with still brings up all the old born-again crap that I hate so much.  I hold the hymnal for my mother, and sing with her, trying not to imagine what it means to her to have me standing beside her, those words coming from my mouth.We adjourn to the graveside – a short walk out the back door.  Mom didn’t bring her wheel chair, so she heads to the reception hall to sit.  I follow Dad to make sure he doesn’t tip over on the gravel and ensure that he finds a chair.  He’s not assertive enough to find one on his own and hard of hearing enough to not understand that people are more than willing to accommodate him.  The liturgy is finished by her casket, the priest trails the shape of the cross on its cover with dirt from his hand.  We head back to the reception hall, I try to catch up with cousins I haven’t seen in ages.  Dad is waiting in line to compliment the priest – I loop back to walk with him into the church.Amy, one of Nellie’s daughters finds me: “wasn’t that a beautiful service?”Why can’t I just lie and say yes?“I’m not the best person to discuss that with,” is what I manage to say.  Amy wants to know why, but I don’t get into it, bad enough that I dumped all my shit on John in the wee hours of the morning, I don’t need to do the same thing to his sister.-- to be continued--