R.I.P.

I enjoy reading obituaries. I always wonder, would I have liked this person? Do I only think I like them now because they are dead? Obituaries always leave me wanting more, because they are never written by the person you really want to hear from.
I once had a good friend who died. He died young, too young. His death was an accident, but he must've sensed it coming, because just a few weeks before he died he told me that if he died before I did, that I shouldn't allow his mother to give him a religious funeral.
"Sure" I said, "No problemo. That would totally suck".
But then he really died, in a terrible accident, and what was I going to do- tell his mother that she couldn't bury her youngest child in a way that gave her comfort? She wouldn't have listened anyway. She's pretty intimidating.
I felt like such an ass at the funeral... I was the only one in the whole place who knew that he would literally be rolling over in his newly dug grave from embarrassment if he could see the precious, unreal service; the little cards with his photo and various Bible quotes that were given out like party favors. I was one of his older friends; the friend he had before he got sober; the no-good burnout from high school. I wasn't asked to speak about him at the funeral though I had known him for thirteen years. That was left to people his mother thought would reflect the more shiny, new, "positive Robert"- people who had known him less than a year. There was his manager at the electronics shop where he had worked for four months, who spoke glowingly of his stellar customer service skills. There was his NA sponser, an ex-junkie Army colonel who gave Robert the tough love his missing father had never supplied. He was kind of cool, but he obviously had so many "issues" of his own that it was kinda distracting-like he had this nervous twitch and he said the word "sobriety" one too many a time for my liking. I don't know, it's like, to someone just passing by, they would have gotten this totally skewed view of who Robert was, like he was just this boring jackass who took pride in his bullshit $8 and hour job and drank bad coffee with a bunch of losers at Waffle House while he talked about where he went wrong.
I miss him.
My mom's bugging me to cut the grass so I have to get off the computer now.
Later.