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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/ElvisGrizzly on 2026-04-03 20:56:28+00:00.
My younger sister Erin passed away this January after battling leukemia for 8 months. A week before she passed she sat with me and told me exactly what she wanted in her service. She wanted it at her favorite bar near MSG where she cheered for the knicks. She wanted Chocodiles (which I didn't know had been out of production since the Hostess bankruptcy). And she wanted a priest to come offer a blessing. The bar was easy, wanting to honor one of their favorite patrons. The chocodiles involved buying a ton of costco twinkies and getting a place to chocolate dip them. And the priest was tough to schedule because no one was returning my calls. So I took confessional at the church nearby and said, "Forgive me father this isn't about sin but are you available tomorrow night at around 7:15?" And that got me a Franciscan.
The rest of it was the people she wanted to speak. The kind of funeral cards (like a basketball card). The vibe she wanted there. All doable.
But the other major thing was she wanted was better funeral slideshows. I'm a former reality TV producer. Having been to one too many crappy funerals with Josh Groban's "Angel" and a bunch of poorly chosen images, I got this.
But she didn't want just one. She wanted one for each major part of her life. Her kids. Her friends. Her work. The man who stood by her side til the very end. Her relationship with her first husband. Her cancer. And her as a sibling to me and my other sister. She picked all the songs. From "It Ain't Over til It's Over" to "Mama Said Knock You Out" (the 'pain in the ass' section) to Mary J. Blige.
I said of course.
Let me say we had a rough childhood. And how I dealt with it was to not cry for over 40 years. Which I get is not ideal. In fact, there was a point, early on, when I started producing the service where i was genuinely worried I might not cry over my sister. That I might be as numb as I was at her bedside at the end. A man who immediately shifted into "handle it" mode to take care of the details and get all the legal stuff done that no one else had the composure to do.
What I forgot is that I'm a pretty good producer.
I've sold some pretty weak projects with bad material in my past because I know how to edit to tell a story. Chicken shit into chicken salad. But this was not bad material. This was a woman who people truly loved and made an impact. It showed in every pic I scanned in.
While I was watching down my work, the seal broke.
I started sobbing in a way I don't even remember doing as a child. And with every video I made, I sobbed harder. Even realizing as I edited, that I was tweaking for even more emotional impact to make myself cry harder.
So we had the service and I was main host and speaker. We also did a livestream on Youtube so her adopted son serving in the Army in East Africa could watch. Over 200 people came and...well it was something. Building the open bar for beer and wine into the budget probably helped. If you have a service, I'm going to tentatively recommend it.
The final video was the only one I turned around to watch. It was just for me and my older sister. It was set to Stevie Wonder's "As" - a song my mother used to sing to us as kids. That last video was about what Erin meant to us as our sibling. The final images in it were her getting younger and younger until it was just us as little kids together.
Even writing this I'm getting teary describing it. It is a slightly cheap, emotional bit of producing but...it works. I must have used it in a dozen packages over my former TV career. And I used it again here. When I watched it that night at the service, I cried again. That, I thought was that.
And this is where the FU comes in.
The other day, I was in Walmart, trying to find some new emergency socks and underwear when one of the songs came on the overhead PA system. The images started firing off in my head. And I started crying behind the fruit of the loom rack. What I've come to realize is that any of those songs from the service will now make me cry. And ANY song by Stevie Wonder - usually one of my very favorite artists - will then remind me of "As" and I'll start crying even harder. So now if one of these songs comes on, I've got like five seconds to block it with airpods or change the music.
There were years my sister and I were crappy to each other and never talked about our feelings in any way. Sarcasm. Ball busting. The occasional sweet memory that was immediately followed up with an insult. So I can appreciate the poetic justice in one of her last decisions, now making me cry involuntarily.
Really nice Erin. REALLY nice.
TL;DR - I produced a funeral video for my late sister to a Stevie Wonder song and it's turned into my own personal version of the first 10 minutes of "UP" and now I start crying if any of his songs come on.