Mike Manderlin was in the middle of a funeral service for a recently deceased colleague when a full bladder sent him to the bathroom in the back of the chapel. On his way there, he noticed a buffet table with hard-boiled eggs, chunks of barbecued chicken, bowls of hummus and pesto, cinnamon rolls smeared with a thick of icing, chocolate chip cookies, and huge slices of shiny, dark chocolate layer cake.
He felt it odd that all this food would be in the same room as a dead body, featured in an open casket no less. But he soon got over this disturbance as a huge hunger welled inside him. He furtively looked up from the buffet table and espied the other mourners who appeared absorbed and lachrymose by the minister’s eulogy and Mike found a compelling need to eat the food with no more delay.
With a sense of mindless urgency that reminded him of documentaries he had seen of lions eating bovine creatures, Mike consumed the buffet offerings and before he knew it there was none left. Embarrassed, he left the funeral and sped home, mortified and worried that his gluttony would not go unnoticed among his friends and co-workers. To his relief, no one ever brought up the matter with him.
Strange, many years later, he still wallows in the pleasure his funeral indulgence and he has never enjoyed food as much since. Sometimes, he dreams he’s eating what he now refers to as the “Funeral Food” and when he awakens he is overcome by bitterness that it was all just a dream. The food was so good in his memory that he has lost interest in eating ever since. He’s tried to recreate the magic by eating food at subsequent funerals, but these attempts have been in vain.
With a withering interest in food, he has lost weight and he feels he is wasting away into a limp, sallow shadow of his former self, a punishment for not being able to control his gluttony and focus his respect on the eulogy of a passed-away soul.
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