When I was a kid, I loved Ray Stevens. He was one of those artists where you could listen to him with pretty much anyone and you didn’t feel like you were doing something inappropriate.
Also when I was a kid, we had this neighbor named Bob with whom my parents became really good friends. Bob was also a Ray Stevens fan. Bob got sick when I was around fourteen and passed away. We were all expecting it, but it didn’t sting any less when the day finally came.
We were sitting in the funeral home on the day of his funeral and all of a sudden his widow walked up to the mortician conducting the service and gave him a CD of some music. She whispers something into his ear and sits back down.
Around the time that the service was ready to start, this music began playing. It was Ray Stevens.
I should mention at this point that Bob had an amazing sense of humor. He specifically told his wife that when he died he wanted the Ray Stevens song “Sittin’ Up With The Dead” played at his funeral. He apparently told her that he was imagining the looks on people’s faces and it was one of the things that was making him laugh in his last days.
A funeral isn’t for the dead. A funeral is for the living. I always think of Bob and how he was trying to make what was everyone’s worst day into something they look back on and laugh about.
Shay Bradley is someone who passed away recently that Bob would have definitely got along with.
He knew that his time was coming short and that when it came time for him to be buried, he wanted people to think of that day and look back on it with laughter.
On the day that Shay was to be buried, he had apparently left instructions that a recording device be placed in his casket with the volume turned up loud enough to where it could be heard through a giant thick box.
Before he passed, Shay made a recording where he said, “Hello? Hello? Let me out!”
When everyone standing by the graveside heard that, they knew that Shay had gotten them one final time.
It was one of those laughs that you know when you are laughing that you really need it at that moment.
Some might look at this as just another practical joke someone is playing on their loved ones after they’re gone. I look at it as an act of kindness by someone who knew his loved ones were going to need to smile on a day when they really needed to.
