SIX FEET UNDER & ME

The first time I rented Six Feet Under I struggled to make it through one episode. A drama about an L.A. family that runs a funeral home seemed like a fascinating prospect. But like Ruth Fisher, the control freak matriarch of the family, most of the characters were insufferably self-involved or downright hostile. Six Feet Under is the brainchild of Alan Ball, and it struck me that the show was just as smug and trite as his American Beauty screenplay (my apologies to all you American Beauty fans out there).
I thought I would instantly gravitate to the show because I have some considerable funeral home heritage of my own. Most of my maternal relatives dwelled in a western Massachusetts town called Easthampton. My great Aunt Antone owned and operated The O'Brien Funeral Home (which still exists today thanks to the entrepreneurial efforts of my cousin Michael).
On weekends my folks often drove my sister, Patty, and I up to Easthampton, where we visited all of our aunts and uncles before settling down for a barbecue or a leathery kielbasa social at my grandfather's house. Aunt Antone's place was my favorite pitstop for several reasons, which are listed below in no particular order:

#1. She often made sugar cookies enhanced by colorful specks of M&Ms.
#2. She had huge boxes of musty old comic books that my sister and I raided - mostly sweet and innocent comics of the Archie/Veronica/Marmaduke variety.
#3. She didn't mind it when Patty and I (and my cousin Jaimie if she was around) headed downstairs to the funeral parlor to climb into coffins that were for sale. On especially intrepid missions my co-conspirators tried to peek in on an embalming proceedure. We never succeeded.
#4. Finally, it was pretty cool to see the black hearses in the driveway. I was simultaneously horrified and impressed to learn that my parents were so strapped for cash when they got married that they took a hearse to church instead of a standard issue limo. *

Well, I think I've worn out enough shoe leather strolling down Memory Lane. But considering my near veteran status in the world of funeral homes wouldn't you think Six Feet Under would be the perfect show for me? It turns out that it is. At the urging of some friends, I kept on watching and gradually came to love the characters, warts and all. The show reminds me that we're all deeply flawed, but that we're all capable of righting our wrongs. That's about as much comfort as we're ever going to get, I suppose, in a world marred by betrayal,cruelty, illness and death.
There's only so much misery a poor guy can take, though. Once I've finished watching the final season (and I only have four episodes left) maybe I'll rent the Police Academy movies and kick back with a bag of pork rinds and a six pack of PBR.

*After reading this my mother e-mailed me to let me know that she and my father actually went to their wedding in Antone's limo, not one of her hearses. But I swear that my father told me it was a death wagon...