On Saturday morning, as Husband and I were packing up the car to travel to New York for his father’s funeral, we learned that at my mother-in-law’s direction, the funeral observances were going to be delayed a day and lengthened a day. In other words, our three-day trip with a two-year-old was now a five-day trip with a two-year-old. The wake would now be two full days.

I had never attended a traditional Irish wake before — traditional in the sense of a prolonged public morning period; there was no drinking or singing of “Danny Boy.” The family installed itself a funeral home for two days, along with the open casket, and friends came to visit and condole. Incredibly, to me, many people came to visit on both days and stayed for hours — and then showed up at the funeral home, the Mass, the burial, and the luncheon on the third day. It was touching to witness that commitment to the community and the honor and respect paid to my father-in-law. It might have been more touching had Husband and I not spent so much time chasing after our rambunctious little Aitch, completely unimpressed with the solemnity of the occasion. Luckily, when he charged the casket, jumped up on the kneeler, and yelled “Hi! Hi!” at his grandfather, everyone thought it was cute.

Mercifully, my sister-in-law arranged for babysitting for the evening wake periods. The first night, the babysitter arrived at my sister-in-law’s house during the dinner break between afternoon and evening sessions. I was a bit nervous about leaving Aitch and his allergies with someone who did not have experience with the Epipen, but I coached her carefully on foods to avoid and had her practice with the Epipen trainer. After instilling her with a healthy amount of fear, I left Aitch in her care. He cried for a few minutes, then all was well.

The next night, that girl was not available, so another girl was enlisted. She arrived while I was eating dinner in the back yard. This time, I delegated allergy-training duties to Husband and resumed my dinner. Five minutes later, he came dashing back: “I injected myself!”

“You what?”

“I was showing the babysitter how to use the Epipen, and I injected myself.”

“How on Earth did you do that?”

As it happens, Husband couldn’t be bothered to track down the Epipen trainer in the car, so he used the live pen to demonstrate. In spite of the fact that the illustration on the Epipen directions looks like this,

epipen

Husband somehow got the idea that you could take the Epipen out of its container, take off the little gray cap, and jam it into your thigh, but it would not activate unless you actually put your thumb on the cap end. For the record, this is not the case. For the record, removing the gray cap is like the removing the “safety,”and pushing the business end against the flesh is like pulling the trigger.

(Also for the record, I object to the sitcom-stereotype of the bumbling husband/father juxtaposed against the know-it-all wife and mom. It’s sexist and trite. But what can I do? Would you look at the material he gives me to work with? This stuff does not invent itself.)

Silly me — I thought we’d be doing shots of whiskey at an Irish wake.