Irony
A few years ago my grandmother died at the ripe old age of 87. She had 6 children and most of them went on to have quite a few of their own, so the number of extended family (not to mention friends) coming was really quite large. So, the funeral was planned as a two-part affair - a smaller service at the crematorium, followed by a big memorial service that everyone could come to the following afternoon.

So the closer friends and family gathered for the cremation, and it was a suitably sad and touching affair. We watched her coffin disappear behind the curtain, but little did we know that granny still had one trick up her sleeve.

The following morning everyone gathered for the memorial service, when the aunt who had been arranging the funeral got a rather frantic phone call from the funeral director. You see, when the deceased disappears behind the curtain at a cremation, they don't go straight in the furnace - they're stored in the back and all the bodies are cremated at the end of the day.

And at some point the previous evening while they were getting ready to do the actual cremation, the crematorium had caught fire and burned down. The director inquired if we still wanted to go ahead with the memorial - and of course we did. Granny had always had quite a finely developed sense of irony, and this certainly lightened the whole mood. And we got the whole thing for free in the end too thanks to the mishap.
( kingofpork is the king of pork, Thu 11 May 2006, 14:07, Reply)