Pre-Funeral Stress Disorder

It's almost funny, the way people respond to the word "funeral" in your facebook status line.
I'm a church soundman. I do your funerals, I do your weddings, everything...
Well, I don't really do your bar mitzvah. (I would, but you'd probably want that in your synagogue...)

Funerals get a special kind of attention, though:
If I'd said "I have to leave the seminar a half-hour early to go to work," my prof. probably would have scowled at me. "To go to a funeral," though, elicits a tender moment of sympathetic reassurance that "oh, of course you can leave early, go whenever you need to."

Let's hope that the members of our congregation take a break from dying for a while, though: there have been at least four funerals in so many weeks since I've come on as church soundman, and some close calls on top of that. I don't mind one way or another what events I have to work at, but I don't like the idea that a shadow of death hangs over the congregation. Clouds of glory and spirits of rejoicing are much, much better to have hanging over you.

Come on, people, enough funerals—bring on the weddings!