Death and little black dresses

There's a funeral today. Another non-smoker, younger than I am, who died of cancer. (And, no, it wasn't from any "secondhand smoke.") Anyway, I'm not going. I don't like funerals. I went to a visitation at the funeral home last night. Visitations are good. Funerals suck. It's a Catholic funeral. And, as we've said before, I'm not Catholic. I once went to a Catholic wedding, where the groom had to become a Catholic in a ceremony just before the wedding, and the whole thing took forever. I once went to a funeral home visitation, and a priest stood up and said, "Let us pray." I bowed my head, and everyone around me started reciting Hail Marys over and over and over and over again, until I finally just got up and left. Catholicism is apparently very time-consuming and somewhat repetitive.
Another friend of mine was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, so I'll be going to his visitation sometime soon, too. Death surrounds me this year. I haven't lost any family members. Just a few friends and acquaintances. And, of course, the world's many careless losers. Death is not scary to me, but it's spooky sometimes. Like when people say that Death comes in threes. Like when there are a bunch of celebrity deaths, such as we had this summer. Like when Teddy Roosevelt's wife and mother died on the same day. Like when someone dies in an automobile accident on their way to a funeral. That sort of thing. It makes you look around you and wonder Whose Next? Spooky Old Death.
No, so, anyway, I'm standing in line at the funeral home visitation, right? And I'm wondering if I should perhaps feel some twinge of guilt or something over the fact that I'm noticing a whole lot of little black dresses in the crowd. And I remember the deceased and his sense of humor. And I know he'd be laughing out loud.

For example...