Surprise Funeral!

Oh yes, you read that right.

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

I’ve mentioned before that my mom died in 2022 and my dad died in 2024.

This post isn’t about them.

I found out on Thanksgiving that a good family friend of my parent’s—essentially, an uncle—wasn’t doing too well. His health had been in decline, he’s been in and out of hospital for months, and the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him. I spoke with his wife, off of speaker phone, and asked: What’s going on? What happened?

And it was then in that phone call, and the subsequent ones after that, that I heard a parallel of my mom’s story. Not in terms of specific illnesses, but in terms of caregiver roles and trying to help someone with their medical issues. I listened.

I listened for a long time.

And those conversations broke my heart.

He was being transferred to hospice in early January. I was going to go to the states in March for my cousin’s birthday. If only he could hold on until I could make it to the states, I thought. I’d be able to see him then.

I found out at the end of January that he’d passed.

My body hollowed out. He was the one who told me after my mom died and before I moved to the UK for my master’s program that he’d be the one doing the grieving—I could go and enjoy myself. He was one of the kindest, encouraging, loving people I’ve ever met. He was also the one who told me that, in his airy, wheezy voice, that my dad was concerned no one would say the Kaddish for him.

Days passed.

I followed up on a whim with a family member and texted them again to ask about something.

“Let’s do a call after the funeral?” they texted.

I stared at the message. “What funeral?” I wrote back.

“What funeral? When?” I insisted.

I missed a phone call from them. “Trigger warning - it’s the viewing right now.”

I called back. They sent me a link the uncle’s funeral.

The funeral that was happening during that texting conversation.

Of course, after I barely wrapped my head around wtf was going on, I hung up the call and watched the livestream of the funeral.

And something within me died.

Such rage I hadn’t experienced in a while coursed through me. What had happened? How did I not know about the funeral?

Miscommunication. Miscommunication was what happened. They thought I’d already been informed about the funeral (I wasn’t). When asked, they said that they didn’t think I’d fly over to the states for it.

It took a while for me to realize that the extra rage that I felt…it was probably because I would have at least considered flying over to the states for the funeral. I would have considered attending. My mom and dad didn’t have big funerals or services or anything of the like.

My uncle did.

And the choice of whether or not I’d actually attend was taken from me. The choice or thought or idea of maybe attending that in-person funeral and have it feel like my mom’s or dad’s stand-in was taken from me.

The service is still on YouTube. I checked. But I haven’t watched it yet. It’s been a month and I still haven’t watched it. I want to, but I just…

It’s hard enough to sit through a funeral, and it’s even harder to sit through a livestream of one.

It was during this time that something else just…stopped. After my mom died, I had my master’s and moving to a new country and the hope and excitement that the future brings in the midst of time. After my dad died, something changed…my last living parent was dead. But then to have the uncle die so soon right after that, and then to not even know about the funeral until it was happening…(and to hear about all the caregiving stories that was happening as well).

It was just enough to make me feel like giving up.

What’s the point?

When my mom made the decision to not go through with chemotherapy and to pursue quality of life, there was something ethereal that happened in those subsequent weeks.

A resignation.

A resigning from this world. A giving in to what was happening.

We were on our way to The End.

And the moment that I found out about the Surprise Funeral, when the reality of it all had sunk down into the depths of me, I felt another tiny, ethereal moment.

For the first time in my life.

A true giving up or giving in moment.

I had such conviction of querying my YA Fantasy novels—which I’ve only received rejections. I’ve enjoyed traveling in the past so much and am so close to other places—but don’t feel like going anywhere. I thought about writing something about caregivers and Gene Hackman but can’t. It’s so heartbreaking.

This whole thing is exhausting.

I don’t really know what else to do.

Go to sleep, I guess.

Wake up tomorrow.

And start all over once again.

Madeline Wahl is a recent graduate with an MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She is a writer, solo traveler, and millennial caregiver to her mom, who recently passed from terminal cancer. Her writing has appeared on Reader's Digest, HuffPost, Red Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others. She is working on her first novel in YA Fantasy and her first nonfiction book proposal on millennial caregiving.