A Kansas City Funeral: The Conclusion

So that's more or less how I found myself in Brian's living room that morning, surrounded by porn and beer and shouldered with the responsibility of getting my buddy to his dad's funeral at 11 a.m.
I walked back out to my car and grabbed Brian's clothes. His house sits on one of the prime lots in a secluded lake community, an heirloom passed on to him when his grandfather died several years before. Though undoubtedly once a stately and well-kept home, the place looked at fucked as Brian got last night. A perfect mirror to the decay and suffering inside.
I walked back in and handed Brian his shirt.
"You want to take a shower?" I asked.
"In a little bit... Dude, will you wake me up in like, forty-five minutes? I need to get some sleep."
With a heave, he rolled over, leaving me alone with the cats and the dirty movies. While I thought about protesting, I knew it was useless. It had been a typical night in Westport for Brian, Jimmy and our mutual friend D.W., Ryan's roommate, who had passed out in his bedroom before I got there. I later found out they'd scored an 8-ball and had watched "about 12 hours worth of porn" since they got home from America's Pub.
I first tried to roust him up at 9:45, but he gave little indication he was alive, let alone about to get up. A splash of cold water only elicited a muttered "Goddamn!" and a plaintive plea for 30 more minutes of sleep.
Frustrated, I bailed for Lee's to get reinforcements, and to pick him up to accompany us to the cemetary.
We got back to Brian's around 10:15, and it took another 15 minutes to get him, Jimmy and D.W. on their feet and dressed. While Brian washed his face, Jimmy and D.W. each did another line in the bedroom, then jumped in D.W.'s pickup to follow me, Brian and Lee to the cemetary.
I've driven faster in my life, but never with more of a sense of urgency. We were supposed to BE at the funeral home at least a half-hour before the services started. Now, we'd be lucky just to make it on time.
At 11:01, we pulled up to the funeral home and raced inside.
Empty.
"Uh, hello?" Brian hollered into the quiet parlor... Lee and I stared at each other and shook our heads.
"No fucking way..." Lee muttered.
Just then, the funeral director, a well-dressed lady in her forties strolled out of one of the offices.
"Can I help you gentlemen?" she asked.
"We're here for the Barnes funeral, Kirk Barnes," Brian said.
"Certainly, we've been expecting you," she said without a hint of irony or bitterness. "You'll need to head back out the road you came, take a left and follow the driveway until you see the tent."
Ryan's uncle and two aunts were already there. Another friend Matt showed up a few minutes after we arrived, and one of Kirk's drinking buddies, Max, a veteran who rode up on a chopped up Harley rounded out the graveside attendees.
The tent soon filled up with cigarette smoke, and the pastor kept the sermon brief. Ashes and dust and what-not.
No one spoke afterward, but for some reason, Brian's aunt Opal kept posing us boys for pictures, snapping away on her digital camera as we surrounded Brian, smiling awkwardly, and laughing at the cokish outbursts of Jimmy and D.W.
"Hell, I don't care if they let women in the military," Jimmy cried out unexpectedly. "They better take my wife because I sure as hell ain't going to Iraq!"
After another half-dozen pictures of the casket, Aunt Opal and company hugged us all, and left.Brian said he was up for anything, but Matt, Lee and I couldn't kick it. I had to get back to Pittsburg, and they both had to get ready to go to work. We stayed with Brian as long as he needed us, but talk soon turned to what the rest of the day would entail.
"Let's get drunk on whiskey and go to the public pool," D.W. suggested.
"Hells yeah, we can chase that 14 year-old ass around," Jimmy hooted.