Complete Chaos

I got called into work for the first time in ages, the first time after I had a no-call, no-show and almost got fired from the family business. I was ready to impress, but didn't expect that the funeral would completely overshadow my performance. We got there and it was a TINY parking lot, one of the smallest I have every worked in. There was this narrow road in front of the church that connected the two sides of the parking lot, and my uncle told me to keep it clear in case any emergency vehicles needed to get through. Initially just considering his legal interests in case a rare emergency happened, but it ended up being very important that he told me that. I parked all the cars, went inside and started chatting with the bagpiper, this police officer that recently got divorced and who I like to talk to. (He told me he would take care of any traffic violations I got, that was cool).

But anyway, it was right as the pallbearers were walking the casket out of the church that everything turned chaotic. There was a second funeral getting ready to go after ours, so two hearses, two processions, two groups of mourners, two everything. Well right as we were exiting this church, one of the mourners had a stroke and collapsed. I had never seen anything like that at a funeral. We called the paramedics and they were  able to squeeze nicely through to get the man to the hospital. Now the second funeral was delayed and we were trying to get the procession going with the emergency vehicles still packing up. People were running everywhere, it was raining, it was hard to tell which procession the vehicles were in and it was a complete, tangled mess. My uncle was running around shouting, my co-worker was getting in the way of cars and I was just watching and trying to help as much as i could. Then out of nowhere this guy in a minivan (from the other funeral) tries to squeeze through the aforementioned "narrow passage" in front of the church. He didn't fit. His car made a tremendous screech as he completely sideswiped one of the cars in our procession. The people in that car were screaming "WHO WAS THAT! HE HIT ME!" and pulled out of the procession, thinking that the guy was hitting and running. They were going absolutely bonkers and we told them that the guy had parked right in the parking lot and they just kept freaking out. Well they pulled out of the procession and a stroke and car accident later, we were on our way.

Apparently this family had given our directors fits because of their worrying and constant changing of plans. My uncle and I laughed the entire way home, he kept saying it was exactly how that families funeral should have gone. My favorite day on the job.