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I don't know how I sat through the funeral. First there was a sermon about how all of us are family, then a lot of liturgical nonsense about how all of us are sinners, and finally something about the departed's "imperfect body." When it was over, I went up to the priest, who's probably queer -- he had stopped in to see Bobby a few times in the hospital -- and said to him, "I liked your sermon, but you made two mistakes. You met Bobby -- there wasn't a sinful bone in his body. And you saw his body: even at the end, it was still perfect."
Bobby's two Texas sisters, who were standing there crying, looked at me as if I had slapped God in the face.
The priest was somewhat better. His face twitched, but he said, "It isn't up to me to decide these things. My work is to share the Church's teachings."
I said, "I know what you mean. I work for an ad agency. I don't believe in sugar-coated breakfast cereals, but I know how to sell them."
Angry? You bet. My therapist Francine is right. But I read in a book on alternative healing that feisty patients live longer than complacent ones. I intend to be angry. Chuck's therapist, Nick, used to encourage him to get angry. But Chuck was just like Bobby: professionally nice. No wonder they liked each other. They called me "the angry Jew." But I intend to stay this angry as an experiment -- an experiment in obnoxiousness, which is what people call it when you tell the truth about how you're feeling, and they don't want to hear about it.
-- Andrew Ramer, "My Journal of the Plague Years"
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