This is one of those songs in which I merely take some real events and make them rhyme. The color of the pickup truck has been changed for metrical reasons.

The Words:

Well, the first time you met my family
It was Uncle Bud’s Interment.
He was in an igloo cooler
In a yellow pickup truck.

They took the cooler from the truck bed,
Took the urn out of the cooler,
Used the cooler for a table.
We was all like “What the fuck?”

And after that you met my cousins on the lawn.
You said “I’m sorry for your loss,”
And they said, “Girl, we’re glad he’s gone,”
“Cause he was ornery and hard to be around.”
“He got meaner as he went into the ground.”
“But enough of that. We’re awful glad you’re here.”
“Got some mean potato salad. Grab a burger. Have a beer.”

And Uncle Bud was sleepin silent in the loam.
And the sun was slippin gentle
Down the maples of my Adirondack home.

Well I remember that cold winter
When we found him in the back lot
Lyin by his little tractor
Barely stretchin out his breath.

He’d built his own homemade enclosure
Out of one-by-four and plastic.
But it covered the exhaust.
He almost gassed himself to death.

And maybe if he woulda died upon that day
My cousins might have somethin else to say.
But some folks don’t even know they’re in the mud.
One among them was my dear old Uncle Bud.

Well these days I can’t remember
What I did there in that holler;
Why I woke up so damn early
Ringin bells and singin songs.

But I still have my hope of heaven,
Like some leaven in a starter,
Where the sons of Love will wake up
Like we been there all along.

And I still hope that Uncle Bud will be there too,
Shinin brightly with a light he never knew.
He won’t remember what’s it’s like to be alone,
Out where the sun is drippin gentle
Down the birches of my Adirondack home.