A Nun Walks into a Bar...

“You can write about this. Just make it funny.”

That's what you told me just a year ago when you called us all together to give us the news. To tell us you had pancreatic cancer. (http://sandwichmomonwry.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-one-where-we-promised-to-laugh.html)

You said you only wanted to have to tell us once. But I think you knew we all needed to be together, to lean on each other, to pass around the tissues, to remember the fun times (we're all right behind you), to prepare for the future.

To prepare for today.

But we weren't.

We aren't.

“Just make it funny.”

I couldn't do it then, and I don't think I can do it now. And since you can't be here, I'm gonna write whatever I want.

Like you knew I would do anyway.

Damn it.

Today I cried at Panera. I didn't make a scene. Just some sniffling and blotchiness. Just enough to make the servers nervous. They finally stopped looking at me funny every time I went in to Papa Murphy's – where I cried after you first told us the news -- and now this. 

I'm not sure what that says about me... or you... or fast food. But the absurdity does kinda make me laugh.

I think it probably made you laugh this morning, watching me cry in my coffee.

They serve coffee at Panera, Brenda! Coffee! Do you know how much I love coffee?

I can see you with your head thrown back, blue eyes sparkling, and those dimples!

Earlier this morning I was thinking about how, when we lose someone we love, we cry for us... not for the one we lost. We cry to make ourselves feel better. Not because it will make the ones we miss feel better.

Was that you nudging me, reminding me? Preparing me for the call?

I know you are OK now. I know you don't hurt now. I know you're not sick anymore.

I know you're OK now.

I can hear the angels laughing and I know you are scandalizing St. Peter. Dear God, please tell me you didn't show up at the Pearly Gates wearing your “Nun Who Ain't Getting' None” costume.

But then again, why not?

And I think of all the people lined up to greet you. All the people who've been missing you as much as you've missed them.

As much as we'll miss you.

So, here goes....

A nun walks up to a bar in heaven.

“Gimme a Captain and Coke,” she says, winking at the cute angel tending bar.

The angel, shocked by her behavior, faints dead away.

“I didn't ask for Sex on the Beach,” she says.