I  went on Wednesday to a funeral. It's the first one I've been to.

I wore my blazer for the first time that day.  I was planning on wearing it for a school open-house, but I dislocated my knee-cap two days before, so that didn't pan out.

The reason I went was the reason a majority of my senior class went: the mother of one of our classmates (we call him Beast sometimes) died.  She died on March 27, 2008, a few days after her birthday on Easter.

Our school talks a lot about how much brotherhood the school has. We all thought it was just a joke when we started going here, but there we were, overfilling the pews. 

There were only 6 guys out of the two hundred and thirty-something that didn't go.  Those of us didn't know Beast's mom or Beast himself went anyway to show him that he wasn't alone and that his class supported him.

We got to leave from school a bit after 10, and we were supposed to come back before 1:45, just in time for one more class.  Many of the guys were planning on skipping because it was pointless. 

Even I, Mr. Follow the rules, was considering skipping, but I couldn't decide, so I borrowed a coin, a Sacajawea coin, with the mother and the baby pictured on it, before the ceremony started.  I was gonna flip it after: Heads, I go back to school; tails, skip.

It was a Catholic funeral, so there was the whole mass bit.  There were 3 priests there, one was from our school.  The other two used to serve at the church; one had this really deep monotone voice.  He sounded like some robotronic martian.  I was fighting back a smirk and trying not to laugh when I first heard him talk;  I was so glad that he wasn't the main speaker.

When we went up for communion, I let the priest know that I wasn't Catholic, so he gave me a blessing instead:"May we all be united one day in the kingdom of Tracy [Beast's mother]."

It wasn't very emotional until the end.  Beast's family came up one by one to say a few words.  There wasn't that much crying until that point, I guess it's because it just hit them that they were finally saying good-bye.  I found myself fighting back a few tears as well.

When it was Beast's turn to speak, he started off by saying,"I promised myself that if my mom could fight off cancer for two years, that I could fight off tears for two minutes."  That broke a lot of the tension in the church.  He did pretty well for most of it, but you could tell there was a lot of emotion in his voice, and he paused sometimes to recompose himself.  I'm not used to seeing a classmate cry; it was...weird.

After everyone said their good-byes to Beast's mother, we went outside to release three doves.  I watched them fly off.  The third one flew off a bit late, but caught up with the other two pretty quickly.

The seniors then started talking amongst themselves on where they were going for lunch, and whether or not they were going back to school. 

I realized at that point that I would have nothing to do for an hour if I did.  My mom would probably yell at me if I did, and that's never a good thing.  So I just returned Sacajawea -- I didn't even flip the coin.  I was going back to school, along with half the class.

For the rest of the day we asked, "why did I come back?"