I went to MSgt Wade’s funeral this afternoon.

Wade led a life in which he made many friends, and helped a lot of people, and made even more people laugh. As his son noted, in the most positive way possible, he was a “goofy bastard,” and a lot of that was because of his sense of deep abiding honesty.

He was a military Chinese linguist, and among other things, lobbied the chain of command or immersion training to be a part of military foreign language training. (Which it now is)

He is also the one who told me that the name I gave one of my cats, Tudza, not only meant “Rabbit,” but was also Chinese slang for gay, which might explain why my fixed since age one cat has a serious catnip problem. (Not really, if cats cared about their names, they would come when called).

One thing that I still have a problem with in non-Jewish funerals is the open casket bit.

I’ve been to about a dozen funerals, with about ¾ being Jewish, and hence closed casket, and I still don’t get the open casket funeral. It gives me the serious willies.