The day I learned how to cry digitally

Have you ever been invited to attend a high class burial of someone you know nothing about? Just like weddings, we always invite our friends to escort us to attend burials just for company. In most cases, burials that are held within the city are quite high class these days, especially those that are held on weekdays, to ensure only movers and shakers are present.

Hustlers rarely make it for weekday functions; they might lose their jobs for asking for a day off. High-class in such a way that they can almost pass for black-themed fashion shows.

The machines that are driven have a cut above the rest and all the close family members are always in dark shades! It’s almost impossible to read their feelings. Eye contact is very important in knowing someone’s emotions, so when the dark shades are on, you really are interfering with our duty to read your emotions and empathise.

The smile or frown is really not enough minus eye contact. Normally, the security is very tight in these burials that you end up questioning the deceased’s background instead of mourning. Your eyes on the casket and ears to the ground, you don’t want to miss a single thing. Maybe, just maybe, hoping that at some point, dollars will be thrown in the air for mourners to grab their fare back home.

In these high-class funerals, mourners rarely wail, they cry digitally, or do they cry in advance? They arrive in style dressed in dark designer outfits and six-inch heels. They sit on marked chairs and start fanning themselves as they go through the funeral programme, which is a duplicate of an album from the leafy suburbs. You can actually carry these programmes back home to be part of your collection of fashion magazines.

If you thought you would be given the chance to view the body, think again, it was viewed in advance at Lee and the casket sealed. Maybe it was never even viewed in the first place, I can assure you these movers and shakers dread corpses!

Most of the random people invited for such burials just end up spending the better part of the function with their mouths agape and their hands on their heads. Unlike other normal burials where you pity the bereaved families, you end up wanting to be part of the family instead. You imagine the wealth left behind and curse the place you were born.

Since I am on leave, last week I was lucky enough to get an invite to such a burial on a weekday. Let me just say I gatecrashed because seriously, whoever invited me was a friend to a friend of the deceased. She warned me in advance about the class of the burial and sure enough, I did not disappoint.

Both of us do not drive but at least we have six inch heels and little black dresses. Not forgetting our counterfeit shades we bought at the bus station. Who was going to have the time to confirm that they were original anyway?

The burial went so well considering we were already prepared for all the proceedings. Nothing strange happened until we went back to the deceased house for prayers that evening. The prayers were supposed to be only for close family members and friends. Since we were with the deceased close friend, he gave us a lift from the cemetery to the home of the deceased for prayers before he could drop us back to town.

We were among the last to arrive and found most of the guests already settled in the state of the art living room fully equipped with ushers. We were directed to sit next to a window, which we calmly did. As my eyes wandered around the living-room, they settled on something on the curtain at the window next to us.

One glance and my heart missed a beat! It was a helicopter fly and it sat there relaxed! I remembered how painful it stings and quickly grabbed my shoe to save the day. I knew mourners would thank me later, no one wants to get stung by that fly on such a day.

As I hit it hard against the window hoping to kill it, I realised there was another one above it holding onto the curtain tight as well. They were not even moving despite me hitting them yet all eyes were on me.

Then the widow dropped the bombshell “Excuse me, those are decorations”.