We were at a funeral, my mother and I.  I was 13-ish and she was 43-ish.  There is a certain set of rules for funerals that I did not know at the time.  I still don’t know them almost a decade later, but that’s besides the point.  I knew one rule.  One.

Don’t laugh at the funeral.  (I have since come to find, it is customary to laugh at funerals at certain times. I also do not know when this is appropriate. But again digressing.) Further, there are certain times in a funeral in which you are doubly not supposed to laugh.  Particular violations of human etiquette that are nearly unforgivable.  Like, let’s say, during the playing of Taps.  I should mention, it was a military funeral, 21 gun salute and all. 

This is what happened.

All is quiet in the damp, overcast graveyard save one lonely trumpet.  It plays that all too familiar death march behind the spectators.  I am listening reverently (in the manner in which one should listen at funerals) and I actually enjoy the sound of the trumpet.  I turn vaguely to watch the trumpeter play. To my surprise, there is no trumpeter.  In fact there is only a small CD player sitting on a headstone and a very official-looking, uniform-wearing man standing next to it.  It actually took me a second for my brain to realize the trumpet sound was coming from the CD player and not some hidden trumpeter behind a bush. Though I didn’t notice, my mother had turned to see the same thing with the same slightly-shocked expression only seconds before.  So when she saw me do the exact same thing, she burst out laughing.  Then I did.  And when I say “burst out laughing” I mean burst out.  There was nose-snorting, spitting and shaking.  The whole shebang.  All the while, we’re trying so, so hard to stop and be quiet while this veteran is being put to his eternal rest and that’s only making it worse.  I keep picturing it. This shitty old CD player and the “Official Button-Presser” diligently keeping his button-pushing post.  The more I try not to think about it, the more I do. Every time I manage to stifle my laughter for a second, I see my mom shaking with laughter or hear her snort and I’m off again.  To top it all off, we were also both desperately trying to make it look like our uncontrollable laughter was uncontrollable sobs.  So we’re standing there, in the middle of a dead soldier’s funeral, rain drizzling down, people all around crying and solemn and we're laughing our asses off because the military is so cheap they play Taps on a crappy CD player on a headstone.

It was the first time I looked death in the face and laughed.  It wouldn’t be the last.

It seems to me, upon reflection, that perhaps the war has gotten so costly, they can no longer afford trumpets or trumpeters.  I’m glad.  Gave me years of laughter.