April 16, 2019 | Daniel Swift

People Share The Most Inappropriate Behavior They've Seen At A Funeral


Funerals are meant to be somber affairs. They are times to mourn the dead and remember their lives. Some cultures may include more festive celebrations as part of their funerary rights, but nearly all funerals around the world have that feeling of weight and respectfulness in common.

Sadly, not all funeral guests seem to understand the atmosphere, or if they do, they don't respect it at all. The following stories are of people who saw such inappropriate behavior at a funeral that they couldn't help but share it with the world. Hopefully, their accounts will help to relieve themselves of the burden, make other people laugh, shame the people who committed the behavior and educate others not to follow in their footsteps.

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Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!

#1 I'm "Devastated"

A narcissistic family member arrived late after everyone had already arrived at the burial site. She was wearing an enormous hat and sunglasses and a low-cut gown as if she was attending the Golden Globes red carpet or something. She loudly making an absolute scene of how devasted she was, and just generally making it all about her.

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#2 Guilty Acting

The mother of the deceased put on a terribly-acted show about how much she loved and missed her daughter. Shortly thereafter, she was convicted of the daughter’s murder.

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#3 Where's My Cut?!

I witnessed the estranged daughter of a family friend come into the visitation screaming and looking for her brothers because she had found out she was never written into the will. It was a heck of a scene.

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#4 Think Of The Children

An angry old woman stormed out of the bathroom with a fistful of feminine hygiene products, screaming about how inappropriate we were for keeping them in there because there were children there. She threw them at the funeral director’s face. They were kept in a cabinet, in a small basket, well hidden from public view. She had definitely been rifling around to have found them. We were no longer allowed to keep our sanitary products in the restrooms after this.

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#5 Past Last Call

At an open casket wake, a friend of the deceased attempted to give her a drink, She ended up being forcibly removed as she wouldn't stop and spilled a lot of the liquid in the casket. It was as horrible and inappropriate as it was heartbreaking, for everyone.

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#6 Such Grief From An Ex

My cousin's funeral—he was 27-years-old and involved in a single-car crash after he hit a slippery patch on the road and smashed into a concrete wall. At his funeral, all of his brothers, sisters, and parents sat on the front row at his graveside service. Then, lo and behold, my cousin's ex-girlfriend of over a year showed up and immediately inserted herself in the front row next to his sisters.

She proceeded to scream, cry, wail, and throw herself on the ground periodically throughout the service. All of the family just gave her awkward stares, and no one wanted to address her inappropriate behavior. I had never seen that type of attention-demanding behavior before...

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#7 A Little Inappropriate, A Lot Funny

My grandfather was always a trickster. He had a great sense of humor. He had this little song he would sing to me and my siblings where he would just repeat the words “doo doody doo” over and over. At his funeral, my aunt was telling stories about him and in the middle of it, my six-year-old cousin screamed “DOO DOODY DOO” in front of 50 people. Needless to say, it lightened the mood a little bit and made everyone a little happier.

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#8 Imagine This

Picture if you will, two elderly women in a funeral squaring up as people are still crying from the ceremony. At the lunch after my grandpa’s funeral, his daughter from a previous marriage “Dee,” who no one had seen in years, showed up. Dee had been writing bad checks all the way to the state prison and definitely had some unresolved beef with my family when she got out.

The last time my mom saw her was when I was 11. Dee left her infant daughter to my mom to babysit and never came back. Fast forward to the funeral, Dee was acting like it was a family reunion, but no one was having it since she basically ruined the lives of everyone in the room in one way or another. My grandpa’s last girlfriend, a legally blind woman, tried to physically fight her until others stepped in.

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#9 Bright Orange Means Stay Away

At my great-grandmother's funeral, her son showed up to the funeral wearing khakis and his bright orange Tennessee Vols shirt. Then, he started yelling at my mom when she asked him who the pallbearers were going to be. He also threw a fit about who was in the will. Mind you, we hadn't even left the funeral home yet. Needless to say, we don't talk to that side of the family anymore.

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#10 My Attention

My brother-in-law's girlfriend locked herself in a car, cried and screamed, threatening to hurt herself...AT my father-in-law's funeral. She was fine five minutes later and explained to my in-laws she did it because she was not used to not having all the attention.

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#11 John Who?

At my grandfather's funeral, the stand-in, curmudgeonly pastor, kept calling my grandfather by the wrong name. Pastor: "We are here to memorialize the life of John Smith." The crowd looked confused. Pastor: "John Smith lived a good life. I had never personally met John Smith." My spouse loudly said, "Well, I've never met John Smith either. His name was Bob White."

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#12 Probably Did Not Mean Well

At the wake for my very young sister, my aunt started talking to me about how she was going to write children's books. She gave me a pen with her contact information on it. I'm not sure what she wanted, but I was working on an English degree and we barely ever saw her, so I took it as self-promotion.

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#13 Jump And Duck

My aunt tried to jump into the casket at my grandmas funeral. Multiple people had to restrain her as she wailed and clawed at the casket. My sister couldn't go back in after that, so we just walked around town. My aunt had the nerve to be passive-aggressive after that as if we ducked out of the service because we had better things to do.

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#14 Clowns For Butterflies

My cousins funeral. He was only 16 when he died, so there were a lot of kids there as well. My mom wanted to surprise everyone by sending in clowns to his funeral. They were going to paint butterflies on their faces because my cousin died of epidermolysis bullosa (known as butterflies disease).

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#15 Let He Who Is Without Sin...

My best friend died last year from random heart failure at 25. The pastor at the funeral went on for about 10 minutes about how we were all the reason for his passing because we were sinners. He even went as far as to say that we should join his church to make amends. He didn't know any of us.

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#16 Inappropriate, But What He Would Have Wanted

My boys, who were aged 10 and eight years old, were at their great-grandfather's wake. They got a chair, moved it to the casket and started making his mouth into a smiley face. They were laughing the whole time. When my father-in-law and I saw it, we immediately pulled them away and told them they shouldn't do that. My father-in-law said, "It's fine, he would have really loved that they did that."

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#17 Licking At A Funeral

My grandmother died when I was about 10. We were at the wake for nearly six hours and the makeup they had put on her was very bad. It was sad and disturbing. To lighten the mood, my uncle told my sister that people wouldn't feel it if she liked their elbows. We went around licking elbows of grieving family members for the rest of the wake. Yes, you can feel if someone licks your elbow.

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#18 Might Not Like Them But Should Respect Them

I was at the funeral of a priest once. He was so well liked in the church. Not only did dozens of priests visit, but there were also like, two or three bishops. More than half of the people had to stand outside of the church and listen via loudspeaker. It was kind of hard to do that, though, when the neighbor of the cemetery played anti-church songs super loudly from his porch. I'm absolutely not religious and usually listen to exactly the same music as well, but wow that was inappropriate. Especially because the guy got up at around 8 a.m. on a Sunday, just so he could mess with people.

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#19 Cheer Up For America

I had a guy who I didn't know walk up behind me and my dad during my grandma's funeral. They were lowering the casket at that moment. The jerk put his arms around both of us and I looked back. Everyone was wearing black, obviously, except for this guy. He was wearing American flag pajama bottoms and a red shirt with the sleeves cut off. He looks at both of us and said: "Cheer up, guys."

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#20 Grief From A Monster

This was at my grandfather-in-laws funeral. My husband's mother is a SAINT. I don’t know where she got her sweetness from, because it was CLEARLY NOT FROM MY HUSBAND'S GRANDMOTHER (her mom). She ditched all of her kids when they were babies—literally left them in the driveway and disappeared. Over the years, my mother-in-law talked to her maybe once a year.

She had the audacity to show up to the funeral to bask in the attention. The first AND ONLY thing she said to my mother-in-law was: “I need the death certificate so I can file for whatever benefits or retirement money he had," even though they had been divorced for 40 some odd years. My mother-in-law was already in tears. My husband had to physically restrain me because I wanted to knock her on her dusty butt.

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#21 Disparaging The Dead

My mom passed away recently. Her high school best friend is the WORST type of person. She's 53, still lives with her father, and swears she’s God's gift to earth. She hadn’t spoken to my mom in at least five years, yet she started rumors that she had an addiction problem and died from that. She said this to people she didn’t at the funeral, which she wasn't even invited to.

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#22 She Needed More Salt

Just before spreading their mom's ashes, the daughter stuck her finger in the jar, scooped some up, and ate it. I tried to play it off like it wasn't the weirdest thing I just witnessed, but my wife said out loud,"Um why?" She replied, "I wanted to see what my mom tastes like, kind of bland and crunchy."

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#23 We're Free!

My uncle, who is not well liked in the family, passed away. He was notoriously mean to his children through verbal and physical abuse, a loner, and a man who would generally look for any excuse to argue. Anyway, at his funeral, everything was going well until my cousin came barging through the doors with a single fist raised in the air. Everyone turned and looked at him as he triumphantly exclaimed: "Rejoice! The tyrant is dead!" He turned around and waltzed out of the room like nothing happened.

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#24 Crying Is Quite Appropriate

When I was 13, my aunt passed away in a terrible car accident which my uncle and cousin were also in and survived. My aunt and mom were best friends so naturally, I was also very close to her. At the funeral, I sobbed, especially when we all sang Amazing Grace. My aunt was the first death I had experienced in my family. My stepmother pulled me aside, in the cemetery immediately after the service, and told me that my crying was totally inappropriate.

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#25 Still Family

My father's funeral. My family is white and my brother is adopted—he's Puerto Rican. We were in line, accepting everyone's condolences. One man came up to him, looked him up and down and said, "Who are YOU?" My brother responded "I'm his freaking son. Who are YOU?"

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#26 Stating The Obviously Inappropriate

When I was nine and my brother was five, our great uncle died. On the way to the visitation, my parents were explaining death to my brother. When we arrived, my brother ran behind the casket and yelled, "THAT GUY IS DEAD!" as a PSA to everyone in attendance. No one knew if they should laugh or not. The great uncle was named Ora, and he was a sailor who was covered from head to toe in tattoos. No question he would have found it hilarious.

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#27 Where's Clyde?

At my grandfather's funeral, the family all debated over whether my grandmother should be at the funeral home visitation, as she had Alzheimer's and it might upset her or she wouldn't understand. They decided to bring her. All day, she greeted guests, showed them her dear Clyde and talked about how much she missed him. She would get to talking and then, every now and then, look over at the casket and realize that it was him in there. She'd get surprised that it was him. It was actually adorable because she wasn't too upset for long and helped the other family members forget their grief for a moment. When it came time for the minister to do a service, it was very quiet for a moment and you could hear my tiny grandma's voice saying, "Where's Clyde? That pansy, he always hated to go to church." It might have been inappropriate, but we all laughed through our tears.

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#28 The New Inappropriate

It was a relative of my mother who died. Along comes his nephew who, instead of paying his respects or just standing like a normal human, got right next to the coffin and didd a Fortnite dance. This made me think of bad thoughts.

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#29 Rude Beauty Lesson

At my grandmas funeral, which was quite a somber ceremony, we were thanking people for coming. Guests generally shook my hand or hugged me and apologized for my loss, but not this one guy. He shook my hand said, “Don’t you know eating chocolate gives you acne?” and turned and walked away. I was stunned.

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#30 Assume He Was A Saint

My grandfathers funeral. The priest who was doing the service at the graveside. He was new to the area and did not know my grandfather or family. As part of the service, he indicated as much, saying that he did not know my grandfather, whether he was a good man or not, or whether he was saved by Jesus or not, and that he may be down below at that very moment. My aunt was ready to throttle him and gave him a death glare that cut his speech short. A few minutes later, everyone was having an alone moment with the casket before it was lowered into the ground. While my aunt was having her moment, the priest decided it was a good time to ask her about her death-glare and wanted to know if he had done something wrong.

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#31 The Count Of Funerals

A close friend of mine unexpectedly passed away due to a freak accident. Just to give you an idea of how to picture this story, the priest sounded like the count from Sesame Street. At the wake, he forgot my friend’s siblings names a few times, gave a very short speech and, despite knowing the family for a long time, didn’t seem to have any recollection of who they were. Fast forward to the end of the funeral: several family members had given beautiful and heartfelt eulogies, friends read biblical passages and sang songs.

It was time for the priest to wrap things up and send everyone to the cemetery, but instead, he rambled on for a minute or two before abruptly saying, “And now, I must switch gears, because I have a wedding this afternoon.” He moved his hands up and down, looking quite confused, then finally brought them together while he pointed to my friend’s parents to say, “I’m sorry?” It sounded like some sort of Transylvanian Ron Burgundy. Everyone was in shock but at least my friends and I could joke about how hilarious our deceased friend would have found it all.

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#32 Inspired To Be Inappropriate

My friend's mom passed away, so naturally, a lot of his childhood friends went to his funeral. One of them was a guy we all knew and did not like because he was so pretentious. As the funeral went on, they asked if anyone who knew her well would like to give a few words. His hand instantly shot up and he gave the longest speech of the day (longer than the eulogy). In this speech, he brought up that he was a gifted student, was in the highest level math at his elementary school, was currently taking college calculus, was attending USC, worked in cancer research, was planning to go to medical school and was currently getting a 3.8 GPA. We all sat there with our mouths wide open as the kid used his friend's mom's eulogy to brag about his academics.

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#33 Feeding A Dinosaur At A Funeral

The funeral home where we held my grandfather's funeral after he passed was quite small, and there were a lot of people who attended. My family was lined up in front of the casket and we had a separate line for people to come up to us to give condolences, shake hands, etc. The line started with my father and ended with me (the youngest grandchild). The washroom was a few feet away from where I was standing, everyone had to walk by it once they exited the line. So, I was doing my thing; shaking hands, kissing cheeks, saying thank-you's, and giving hugs. As more and more people started to pile in, I noticed that one of my cousins was missing from the line. I looked over and saw that the bathroom was occupied. No problem, he probably just had to go.

Just as I was thinking this, I heard a very loud, very familiar voice shout "RAWR" from the bathroom. Yes, that "Rawr" means "I love you" in dinosaur speak. I turned white, and the man I was shaking hands with looked embarrassed for me. He heard it too, of course. The woman next to him heard it as well, and the woman next to her... It continued for a solid five minutes. Everyone who left that line heard at least three loud "RAWRs" as they walked away. I excused myself and walked to the bathroom, not even bothering to knock. I opened the door and there was my cousin, holding an entire roll of paper towels, ripping them off one by one. He was standing in front of the garbage can, which was one of those step pedal ones. He pushed it open with his foot, yelled "RAWR" and threw a paper towel in. Then, he stepped on the pedal a few more times afterward to mimic a chewing motion, complete with quieter "nom nom nom" sounds. He looked up at me and smiled.

 I don't know what kind of look came across my face but his smile faded quickly. I spoke through my teeth, "Everyone outside can hear you." He looked down at the garbage can and quietly said, "Oh, that's a shame." I stood there staring at him for a solid minute before he finally realized that he should probably stop what he was doing and get back in line. As I moved back to my spot, I noticed some people were appalled, but most were trying to hold back laughter because they knew my cousin and that's just something he would do.

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#34 Gloriously Inappropriate Timing

I was at a family friend’s funeral when the priest who was giving a eulogy accidentally set off his life alert. It was one of the funniest things I had ever witnessed.

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#35 Easily Portable

My aunt and my mom don’t get along. At my father’s memorial service, my uncle (my mother’s brother-in-law) was carrying my father’s ashes and decided to alleviate some tension between them by saying that my dad was now “travel-sized.” It did not go over well.

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#36 We Knew, Now's Not The Time

One of my aunts used my grandmothers funeral to announce for the first time publicly, at least as far as most of the family was concerned, that her biological father was not my grandmother's husband at the time she was conceived. The fact wasn't a shock to many people; my aunt was the only natural blonde in the large family. The setting for announcing it, on the other hand, was pretty outrageous.

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#37 Kick A Stone

At my father's funeral, my mother wanted to see the casket go into the ground. So they had it all set up with vault above ground and they were going to put the casket in the vault, put the lid on then lower the vault into the ground. Everyone but me, my mother, my brother, the funeral director, and the backhoe guys headed out for funeral sandwiches. They hooked the bucket to the vault lid (a big slab of concrete) and lowered it into place.

But it went on crooked and didn't seat right. Before they could pick it back up and re-adjust it correctly, the funeral director just starts kicking the lid as hard as he could. Everyone was just standing there open jawed as this overweight, middle-aged funeral director ran himself out of breath kicking this thousand-pound slab of concrete and failing to budge it an inch. Once he winded himself and had to take a breather, the backhoe guy gave the controls a twist and it slipped into place.

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#38 Just Keep It

I went to the funeral of a friend a few years ago. He was in his 20s when he died. An attendee was trying to slip something into the casket at the graveside. He didn't realize that after the viewing, they locked the lid. He kept trying and trying until he caused the casket to tip off the stand. The fall caused the lid to catch on something and popped open. The body partially fell out of the casket. This caused great trauma to his family, especially his grandmother.

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#39 Doing Good Work

My godmother's brother died. We showed up at the funeral after school and mom put us in the coffee room because we being rowdy. When my godmother came to say hi, I had climbed the vending machine and was acting like a pterodactyl and my brother was using a baton made of straws to point out my unique features in a British accent. My godmother went from red teary eyes to all-out laughter and had to compose herself to return to the viewing. Even at six or seven, I felt good about that.

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#40 Your Dad Died? Look At This!

One of my sister's friends showed up at my father’s funeral. He’s really immature and just annoying. I wasn’t super thrilled he came but whatever. There was a really long line for the viewing and hundreds of people came to show their support. When he made his way up to the family, he made a comment about the line being long and then proceeded to try and show us a YouTube video. I just told him to move along. I guess he hung out the whole night and ate all the food we put out. When things quieted down, he hopped back in line and tried AGAIN to show us this video. I was stern with him and said it was not the appropriate time. He stormed off in a huff and wrote me a nasty email.

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#41 Too Many Members In This Family

At a cousin's baby's funeral—she was pregnant and there were complications about a week before her due date that caused her to lose her daughter. It was a stillbirth. Most of my family is Mormon. There's a lot of us. My particular line came from a great-great-grandparent who had 13 children, and that great-great-grandparent herself had 10 siblings. Yes, we wear nametags at family reunions. That being said, because we're technically family, a ton of people get invited to funerals of people they don't know. At this particular funeral, another woman was offended by the mother and decided to be as offensive as possible. The family released a flock of doves, in honor of the innocent life taken too soon. The crazy lady brought a freaking weapon and aimed at the flock of doves when they were released, terrifying the living heck out of everyone there. No one knew what was going on.

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#42 He's Alive

It was a funeral for an uncle I was very distantly related to, and (this is happening in Greece, in the summer), the church was very full and incredibly hot. You could smell the sweat. There was incense, but the air wasn't circulating, and the priest was just going on and on. I don't think I can describe how grim the situation was. Not totally unexpectedly, therefore, just as the priest was getting to something particularly emotional, an old man standing near the back fainted. Somebody had the brilliant idea that the pallbearers should carry him since they've practiced it. Everybody squeezed a bit tighter to let them through. They picked him up, three on one side and three on the other, i.e. more or less as they would the casket, and started carrying him towards the door. Suddenly, this guy woke up, turned his head several times, grasped what was going on and immediately started yelling, "I'M ALIVE! I'M ALIVE! I'M ALIVEEEEEE!" At which point, one of the pallbearers laughs so hard that he drops what was thankfully a leg, and the others struggled to put him down in what is now a church absolutely exploding with laughter.

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#43 There She Is!

My first boyfriend’s grandma passed away while we were together and I went with to support him. His grandfather was two hours late and we didn’t even see him come in. All we heard was someone say, “THERE’S MY SEXY MAMA!” We all turned around to watch his very tipsy grandfather stumble toward her casket before stopping in front of it and breaking down in tears.

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#44 It Can't Be True

Years ago, my boss died. I was around 19 at the time. Since he was a big part of our company for many years, most of our employees went and sat in the back so his family could be up front. Keep in mind this was an open casket. Halfway through the ceremony, someone who claimed to be his daughter (he never spoke of kids) started screaming and shouting, "No! You can't be dead!" It got pretty sad. Then, out of nowhere she JUMPED ONTO HIS BODY and started smacking his corpse shouting, "YOU CAN'T BE DEAD! WAKEUP! WAKE UP!" It was extremely awkward, sad and somewhat funny, to be honest.

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#45 Disbelief Does Not Require Disrespect

Last year at my aunt's funeral, we were all sitting in the church. I sat in the way back because I was kind of uncomfortable. My jerk cousin chose to sit next to me and then say, "I don't give a heck either, I'm not religious at all." He then proceeded to play some game on his cell phone for the entire funeral. Mind you, this man was 32-years-old at the time. I'm not religious either but I still had the courtesy to kneel and stand when everyone else did. I tried to sing along to the songs and follow everyone else. This guy? No, he was too much of a jerk. I wanted to grab him and say, "Listen I don't give a heck if you're an atheist. I'm an atheist! But it's one thing to not believe in the church stuff and another thing to be blatantly disrespectful at your own aunt's funeral!"

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