No Social Awareness
Yesterday was my mom’s funeral. She passed a week before her 50th birthday after a very long battle with different illnesses over the last 15 years. It was incredibly hard, especially for me, my little sister, and my grandma (her mom). I come from a very large extended family on both my mom’s dad and mom’s side. She also had a million and one friends and neighbors.
They all told us they were coming to her funeral, so we expected a large crowd. My grandma has two brothers. One of them I adore (nice uncle, also my mom’s godfather), the other can sit on a cactus (smells musty and is generally rude with a witch of a wife). The one I adore stayed with us, the other one stayed in a hotel. The awful one is married to the great aunt, who is the star of this story.
I will refer to her as “Tacky” because after yesterday that’s the impression she left. I dreaded seeing this woman at the funeral, so much so it was taking away from my ability to comfortably visit with everyone else because I was so anxious for her arrival. I have always hated Tacky due to the fact she’s always been tacky, in ways that have sometimes made my jaw drop.
She brags about living off the government, has to tell you how much money her jewelry costs (it’s Pandora, nothing fancy), asked nice uncle’s gay son if he has AIDS and that’s why he’s thin, put a label on my great-grandma’s jewelry so we’ll know what she wants to get when my great-grandma passes (she is still alive and well!), tries to hug everything with a pulse, smells like flowery old person, and is generally a huge witch.
My mother also hated this woman so I felt no regrets about being a witch to her right back yesterday.
Yesterday morning, my grandma, nice uncle and his family, another aunt who stayed with my grandma during the last week, my little sister, my boyfriend, and myself all arrive at the church an hour before visitation to finish setting up. We have a huge flood of guests during the hour-long visitation, and thankfully Tacky and crew don’t arrive until about 10 minutes before the ceremony starts.
So, Tacky waltzes in. When I look at her, I can’t help but get furious. She’s wearing a purple t-shirt, white cargo shorts, and a sparkly belt. TO A FUNERAL. Strike 1. Then she came over to my sister, my best friend, my boyfriend, and me, and tries to hug me. I say “No thank you, I’m feeling overwhelmed”. She tried anyway. I again said, “Why don’t you go find my grandma or something?”
And she goes “NO HUNNY GIVE ME A HUG”. So I start walking away with my pals, she follows, and eventually we lose her in this massive crowd. Strike 2. THEN we need to go inside the worship center where the ceremony is being held. As per funeral etiquette, the immediate family is to be seated in the front-most row. My grandma reserved the pew for herself, my sister, my boyfriend, and myself.
Tacky comes up and tries sitting down in that row. I said, “Oh no sorry you need to find another pew, this is ours”. Once more, her behavior stunned me. She says, “SHUT UP THIS IS FOR IMMEDIATE FAMILY”. Yeah witch, not you! I tell her, “You aren’t immediate family, move”. After staring at me and realizing I’m not kidding, she sits behind me and tries to play with my hair.
I smacked her hand and said stop touching me and inched to the front of the pew. I didn’t even care how rude it may have come off to people who don’t know the dynamic. She has always been a Tacky jerk with no social awareness, so she can screw right off with her jerk of a husband. Strike 3. It annoyed us so badly that on the drive to bring my sister back to our dad’s house later that day it was all we could talk about.