What's The Hurry?

For centuries, funeral processions have been the way we honor our dead as we take them to their final resting place. Tradition has it that when a funeral procession passes, we pay our respect by pausing what we are doing and acknowledging the life that just ended as well as our own mortality. There are still a few people out there that subscribe to this philosophy. Unfortunately, there is an ever growing number of people that don't.

I get to see this latter group almost every day. An ever increasing amount of people see funeral processions as nothing more than an inconvenience at best, and in some cases, an outright insult. In any event, the twenty-nine second delay caused by the funeral procession is somehow keeping them from getting somewhere extremely important.

Perhaps they are doctors in a rush to get to the hospital to perform emergency surgery. Maybe they're secret agents with only seconds remaining to defuse a nuclear bomb. I suspect however, that these two scenarios are rare. In most cases, they're simply people in a rush to get to the tanning booth or the store to buy cigarettes.

It's not enough for some people to vent their frustration by giving me the finger or yelling obscenities. Some take drastic action.

I've seen people drive up onto the sidewalk in order to avoid stopping to let a procession pass. Just the other day, I had to stop the procession, get out of the car, and forcefully make some guy pull out of line because he had gotten in between the family limousine and hearse and refused to leave.

My favorite incident happened about ten years ago. We were in a procession traveling on the freeway when I saw in my rear view mirror an old beat up Pontiac trying to pass us at a rate of speed I would have thought impossible for such a car. The only problem was that the lane he was in was about to end. In his mind, I'm sure he thought that old heap had it in her to make it past us before the road ended. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't meant to be. He lost control of the car, spun around about eleven times, and came to a rest in the median. It seemed, as I gleefully rode by and waved to him, that all four tires were flat, and he was wishing he had not been such an ass.

These episodes are becoming far too frequent to the point that motorists riding in the processions are taking notice and relaying their experiences to me. Most are shocked. Many are angry.

In the end, we're all going to have to face the reality of riding in the limousine as we take our loved one to their grave. Even the guy who flipped me off last week will have his turn, and I guarantee that he would not be pleased being on the receiving end of such treatment.

Life is too short to be rushing around all of the time. The next time you're in a hurry and a funeral procession is slowing you down, take that opportunity to pause for a moment and reflect on what is truly important in your life. I'm guessing that whatever you're in a rush to do at that moment isn't even in the top fifty.