The Funeral Business

"So I'm going into the funeral business," my mother declared to me on the phone last night.

"What?"

"Well we had another Quilt Til You Wilt Night, and I was talking to so-and-so, and we're both panicking that we won't have enough money to retire on, so we need to come up with some ideas. And I was just quilting a log-cabin square when she said to me, how about we start a funeral parlor?"

"Were you drinking?"

"Well yes, and it was 2am, but you get the best ideas at that kind of hour!"

Apparently her friend works at a nursing home and "sees a lot of dead people" and there's only one funeral director in town and he's "not particularly sensitive". They've decided there's a market for a different kind of funeral service.

"And what would you do differently?"

"Oh! You know, talk to the families more, find out how they really want to remember their loved one, perhaps a less traditional funeral, maybe some stencilling on the coffin or something..."

"So you mean like White Lady Funerals?"

"No, no... we're thinking more mauve... or lilac..."

It alarms me how serious she sounded. She also said her years of make-up artist experience as a Nutri-Metics lady would come in handy. Then again, it was only a short while ago she was cooking up a scheme with her friends to start a mobile sex toy shop. You know, like a bookmobile, except with vibrators and fluffy handcuffs, giving a whole new meaning to Mr Whippy.