Crew Funeral

The guy who passed away was named Leonard Alexander, everyone called him Alex. He was from St. Lucia, he was 51, had two twin boys and a wife who was pregnant with another one. He was 2 days away from finishing his contract and had been working with NCL for about 16 years.

 

This is all totally insane, or totally normal. They had a memorial service in the Spinnaker Lounge, the big bar where we were going to have a crew party last night, which got cancelled. I thought of about 55 reasons why we shouldn’t go, even down to “it is against St. Lucian custom, we will insult their culture,” which must be what everyone thinks to try to get out of funerals because they are so upsetting. I also heard an announcement and willed it to be an announcement saying the guy was fine and it was just a serious coma and there was a mistake.

 

My roommate and I got there just as it was starting. The lounge piano player was playing funeral music at the front of the stage on the white show piano. They brought in the flower arrangements from the chapel and set them around the stage. The Crew Welfare guy (who makes sure the crew is happy) went around asking people to sit in the middle of the audience. They were filming the proceedings to send back to his family, and wanted to make sure it didn’t look at all empty, which it wasn’t. Everyone was very somber, and if you thought about anything too long, you wanted to puke.

 

There were some “haha weird” moments, like they used the projection screen to say “Memorial Service” and had a picture of Alex with his birthday and yesterday’s date. They don’t know that you can click “view>full screen” and that will get rid of the toolbars on top and the toolbars on the bottom and the arrow and the selection handles around the picture. This is what I concentrated on, this and the cheeseball theater lighting that they had to use, with flourishes and dramatic spins, and the fact that a woman got up and said “I never met Alex and I wasn’t going to read this poem, but now I will” and made a big deal about how it was written 3,500 years ago by a king and p.s. 3,500 years ago, which is 3,500 years ago. And then she revealed that it was Psalm 23, but it was a crap new translation, so “lo that I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” was something else because that woman has no sense of tradition or ritual and she is tiny and pea brained and if someone got in a fistfight with her, maybe there wouldn’t be a memorial service. These are called misplaced emotions, and the only person I could really beat in a fight is the chaplain or whatever job that foolish simpering ponytailed flake with her crap Bible had.

 

This is basically because everything else was totally heartbreaking. The service was lead by a white woman around 40-ish who had the demeanor of a lounge singer who was used to singing. She was dramatically respectful and handed the mic off to the Swedish captain in his dress uniform, who was monotone and read a few words and a little eulogy and then a poem about life and how you are to live life happily. Then we had a moment of silence and the Ukranian piano player played a jazzy version of “Amazing Grace.” The lounge singer opened up the floor to anyone who wanted to remember him.  No one did for a while, so she smoothly asked people to sign the guest book for his family and that we could stay as long as we wanted. Then a guy came down and took the mic. He was a St. Lucian guy in all light beige, shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. He said Alex liked to give advice and was always giving advice like “save your money” and “buy something you can see, so you know why you’re working.” He talked about Alex’s family and how much he loved them, then how much Alex touched his life and gave him advice that he should have gotten from people closer to him. Then he tearfully talked about his last conversation with Alex, where Alex told him he looked like a monk because he had a bald head, which was the same haircut as Alex. And the guy said “no, I look like you” and Alex said “Well, I’m the old monk. You’re the new monk.” And it was stupid and small and trivial and I think everyone in the stupid Spinnaker was crying.

 

In between people, there was always a pause where the lounge singer wrapped it up, and then another person came down. A tough, rapper-dressed guy came down front, the kind of guy who looks like he would trade iphone porn, and could barely talk because he was so upset about the guy’s baby on the way and how excited he was for his new baby and how much he talked about it and planned, and why couldn’t he have just died NEXT year, which was funny and true and crazy and made me want middle eastern mourners to rend their garments.

 

The lounge singer wrapped it up and then my anger target came down to ruin things with her shit translations.

 

Then another guy from St. Lucia spoke, that Alex said “we’re here for a reason, not a season.” Then two more women spoke, one who read a poem that pointed out how pointless it is to get stressed out, and we all got upset. Then finally a woman came down from the casino, because Alex worked in the casino bar. She said how kind and nice he was and how he always told her that you never know what is going to happen. Then she said “we will really miss him in the casino” which was funny and true and heartfelt and insane and made me want to puke or rend my garments.

 

I then ducked out of there. All of the entertainers were probably over-emoting and I cannot keep it together in those situations. There is a collection for his family, which is very good and crew bar was nice and humane and didn’t have creepy hip hop making our ears bleed. 

 

I talked to our room steward earlier in the day who said “nah, that thing in the Spinnaker sounds…no. I’m just going to drink a couple bottles of wine and go to bed.”

 

So. I read a bunch of Chaucer and learned that “eek” meant also and they say “cleped” for named. Like “he was cleped Tony.” And tomorrow we’ll do improv where the memorial service was and use the same mics. Totally weird.