I am attending my great-uncle’s funeral. As his casket is being lowered into the ground, I notice that all his grandchildren are smiling far too much for such a solemn occasion.

Parent: “Why are you boys grinning?”

Grandson #1: “We’re not.”

Parent: “You absolutely are.”

Before anyone can question them further, thick red, yellow, and orange smoke starts pouring out from underneath the casket.

Priest: “What is that?!”

Family Member: “Is the casket on fire?”

Grandson #2: “No!”

Parent: “How do you know?”

The smoke becomes so thick that everyone has to step away from the grave. Then, from somewhere nearby, a boombox starts blasting “Highway To Hell.”

Everyone turns toward my great-uncle’s three grandsons.

Parent: “WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

Grandson #3: “It wasn’t our idea!”

Parent: “You have exactly five seconds to explain yourselves!”

Before their parents can tear them apart, the fourth and oldest grandchild takes out an iPad.

Oldest Grandchild: “Wait! Great-Uncle [Name] left a message.”

He plays a video recorded from my great-uncle’s hospital bed about a week before he died.

Great-Uncle: “Hello, everyone. If you’re watching this, the smoke bombs went off, the music started, and my grandsons followed my instructions perfectly.”

The three boys beam proudly.

Great-Uncle: “Don’t blame them. I planned the whole thing. I wanted one final great prank—and one last chance to make my children clutch their pearls.”

The family goes from furious to laughing, and the grandsons escape punishment. Their parents calm down pretty fast.

The poor priest, however, takes a little longer.

CONTENT WARNING: Death

My husband’s grandmother LOVES Cheetos. She lived alone for the last decade since her husband passed. Her memory had been declining, but she was a very sharp woman, nonetheless.

For Halloween, she’d buy boxes of chips for the kids and would pick the bags of Cheetos out of the box for herself. They were her favorite snack.

She always had some Cheetos on hand in full view too, which the family knew about. She had recently become ill, and when she was in the hospital, she couldn’t say much, but when my cousin joked about having some of her Cheetos, she said, “Don’t… Dare…”

We laughed as she cracked jokes even on her deathbed. She passed away, and we reconnected with family to be close during the funeral. She wanted to incorporate Cheetos in her funeral somehow. So, the family decided to make flower arrangements with Cheetos in them.

When we came to her house, our family had been sorting through her possessions. As we looked through different drawers, cupboards, and other places in the house, we kept finding small bags of Cheetos scattered among her possessions. We were perplexed.

The current theory is that in order to keep from eating too many at once, she would hide them from herself in little places to forget about so that as she went about her daily life, she would stumble upon a bag she’d forgotten as a little treat!

As a way to send her off right, we buried her with a bag of Cheetos.

Long before my great-grandmother passed away, she had a stroke and, eventually, became bedridden. Once she moved into a nursing home, her family started emptying her house, knowing she would never return to it. While going through her clothes, they set aside the dress she wanted to be buried in.

Years passed, and so did she. My grandmother, who had stored The Dress in her closet, pulled it out and said: “Oh no, this won’t do!” She found a cigarette burn hole below the pocket on one side. The hole was no surprise to anybody since my great-grandmother had smoked her entire adult life.

Nobody else thought it was a problem; it was just part of who she was, it was small, and, in a half-closed casket, who’s going to know? Even if someone, somehow, knew, what are they going to say? But for my grandmother, oh no, that just. wasn’t. acceptable. The dress my great-grandmother had chosen, the dress she had worn for years, out in public, WITH the cigarette hole in it, was dismissed and tossed in the trash.

Then my grandmother made the unilateral decision to go to the family-owned department store, where my great-grandmother had bought her clothes for decades, and…buy a new dress. For Great-grandmother to wear. For 72 hours before she – and the dress – disappeared from view, forever.

For those who don’t know, clothes taken to a funeral home for the deceased are usually slit up the back, anyway, because not doing so would make dressing the person nearly impossible.

Then Grandmother got mad because none of her siblings were willing to share the cost of the dress, which she alone had determined was necessary, saying the one their mother had wanted was perfectly fine.

My Mom’s dad had passed away a couple of days previously. The night before the funeral, a dark and stormy night, the funeral home called at 9 PM to tell my mom she had forgotten a tie for the suit for tomorrow’s showing. She freaked out, realizing she would have to drive over to the nursing home to fetch a tie and then drive to the funeral home.

Dad, who loved his clip-on ties and had many of them, said:

Dad: “Oh, don’t go doing that trip on a night like tonight and at this time of night! Just grab one of my clip-on ties and take it with you in the morning.”

My mom, who actually hated that my dad had never learned to tie a tie, responded without missing a beat:

Mom: “My father wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a clip-on tie!”

Seconds after she realized what she had said, she burst into tears, but they were from laughing.

I work in a fine-dining restaurant. Thanks to some recent media coverage of our head chef, the place is booked solid for two months. I am at the host stand and take a call.

Caller: “Hello, I have a reservation under [Caller’s Name] on [date]. We need to push our reservation back by a few hours.”

Me: “Sir, your reservation is for a table of eight. I am afraid we cannot accommodate such an adjustment. We are fully booked for two months.”

Caller: “Oh, well, when is the next time you can seat us?”

Me: “Our next availability is on [date].”

Caller: “But… That’s two months from now!”

Me: “Yes, sir. That’s what being fully booked for two months means.”

Caller: “But… we have to attend a funeral on that day! We didn’t know we’d need to when we booked it! Have some compassion!”

Me: “I’m sorry for your loss, but that doesn’t mean we can manifest a new table. Would you like to proceed with the new booking?”

Pause.

Caller: *Can be heard talking to someone else in the room.* “Dear, any chance we could put your mother in the ground another day?”