Lou’s Last Laugh

Posted on October 1, 2013 under Storytelling with 5 comments

Once you reach a certain age, surprises are few and far between.  There’s not much you haven’t seen or heard, especially in an age when any occurrence can be beamed around the world in a heartbeat.  If you haven’t been to the pyramids, you can take a virtual tour.  If you want to experience lift off in a spacecraft, just go to the Kennedy Space Center and climb aboard the simulator.

I have seen Bobby Orr play hockey and sat a few rows away from the front of the stage listening to Paul McCartney sing “Hey Jude.”   You do become blasé because, one way or another, you’ve seen it all.

Or at least you think you have.

My brother in law, Lou Brosha, passed away last week after suffering a devastating stroke.  Family and friends travelled from near and far to pay tribute to one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet.  Lou was many things.  He was a great raconteur, a better than average card player and he loved his Blue Jays and Habs.  And, of course, the Tories!  Before he and my sister, Eleanor, had relocated to Nova Scotia, they lived in Northern Alberta.  It was there that he lived his twin passions of hunting and fishing.

And he was known to have a little drink of rum to keep the chill off when it was forty below … and in the summer when it was forty above.

On a sparkling, sun-dappled day, family and friends met at the small church in Heatherton.   This is the community where he spent his early years, a member of a large and well respected family.

It’s never easy saying goodbye.

I was given the honor of doing one of the readings during the funeral Mass.  I was handed my script five minutes before entering the church.  I stared at the text with amusement as I read the second line:

“As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation …” (A reading from the second letter of Saint Paul to Timothy (4:6-8).  I was wondering how I would keep a straight face when my turn came.

The service was beautiful and the music uplifting, but when the end was near and incense was wafting through the air, you sensed the moment of dread when the final farewell inevitably comes.

The undertaker made his way down the aisle and stopped to give his condolences to my sister.  He seemed to linger longer than is the custom.  And then I saw a wide grin on her face.  The undertaker continued up to the altar and whispered something in the priest’s ear.  Something was amiss.

Within minutes the word was filtering through the crowd.  In school we used to play “Pass the Word”, in which a message would get garbled and twisted as it was whispered down the line.  As chuckles rippled in waves toward the back of the church, it was evident that there had been nothing lost in the interpretation of the original communique.

There was a skunk in Lou’s grave.

The priest, trying his best to maintain his composure, indicated that “due to complications at the gravesite,” the burial was being postponed until the following day.  It certainly wasn’t weather-related.

It is not uncommon to see tears as the coffin is wheeled out of a church after a funeral Mass.  Imagine the surprise at the back of the church, where the message had not yet arrived, to see every member of the funeral party, including the priest and the undertaker, with grins a mile wide on their faces.

By the time the last person exited the church, there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen.

Apparently the day before, the grave diggers had completed their job and had left the grave uncovered.   During the night a skunk happened to wander by and fell in.

The congregation poured into the adjacent hall and enjoyed a lovely lunch, standard business in small rural communities.  Jokes and one-liners filled the air as one of Louis’ sons recalled how his dad had “skunked him” not long ago playing crib.

The graveyard was a short walk from the church.  My curiosity got the better of me.  I had to see it with my own eyes, as disrespectful as it seemed.  I carefully unhooked the cemetery gate, realizing later that this entrance was rarely used.  I came around a grove of trees and soon realized that I was just about the last person to join the party.  The entire Brosha clan was gathered around the gravesite, seemingly paying their respects to a sleeping skunk.

It was a scene that would have surprised Lazarus himself.

The night before the funeral, a dear old friend of Lou came to pay his respects at the funeral home.  Charlie Landry is a well-known trapper and pest remover.  He and Lou were kindred spirits and shared many stories over the years about wildlife.

There was a stir in the crowd as suddenly a camera crew arrived in the graveyard.  Following on its heels was Charlie, a live trap in hand.  Recently Charlie has become famous, as the Discovery Channel is doing a reality TV series featuring his trapping expeditions.

Charlie spoke briefly and then lowered the trap with a chain.  He baited it with three-day-old cake.

It didn’t take any time at all for Charlie to wake the skunk and moments later, it was hauled to the surface.   There was loud applause from the crowd which had swelled to include just about everyone who had assembled in the church not long before.

Charlie posed for the cameras and then shared an embrace with the deceased’s wife.

Everyone agreed that Lou had, indeed, gotten the last laugh.