SILVER LININGS,
or,
GO BUY MILK

Tomorrow night we drive to pick up Tillie at camp, where she's a counselor. She gets off a day early this week because she's going to help with new student registration at her college on Friday.

We are almost completely out of gas in both cars, and we were trying to make it to Friday before getting any more. Fred gets paid on Friday. As it turns out, Fred was called in to do a funeral tomorrow afternoon, and he should get paid enough for that to put some gas in the car so we can go get Tillie. So, that worked out well.

It's something that people probably don't think about when they are arranging a funeral for a loved one. The fact that the funeral might put a positive twist on someone else's life, I mean. It's an odd notion, but it's true.

We don't know how much Fred will get paid for this funeral. It's not for a member of his church. When a person dies and the family says that he or she didn't have church ties, then the funeral director gets out a list of local pastors and calls until he gets someone to do it. The family takes the director's guidance as to how much to pay the pastor, so we never know just how much it will be until the funeral is over and Fred has the envelope in his hand.

Thirty-five dollars has been a typical amount from this funeral home for a regular funeral. This, however, is just a graveside service, which might be less. Wait and see, wait and see.

The reason I think about all this when Fred does a funeral is because of a story that he heard from an older (and well-to-do, at this stage of his life) pastor. When this guy was young and newly married, they were on a tight budget. One day he went home, opened the front door, and called out, "Honey! Somebody died. You can go buy milk."