Lisa's Funeral

Name:            Trent Rollow
Email:           Trentk_1999@yahoo.Com
Location:        Culver City,Ca
Type:            Ghost
Date:            Wednesday, March 15, 2000
Time:            11:22 AM

Lisa was my baby sisters best friend from kindergarten through high school. Like many Southern California kids in the 70s and 80s, Lisa sadly developed an addiction to cocaine and eventually moved in with a crack dealer who kept her as a virtual sex slave and toy. It was sad to look on this once strikingly beautiful child after her addiction took hold of hershe was a shell of her former vibrant self. Her hair was matted, she was skin and bones, and her eyes were dull and lifeless. She lived only for the crack pipe and would pace fearfully around her boyfriends apartment whenever he left, even if only for a brief errand. (At this point, he took care to hide his drug cache to preclude Lisa from stealing and smoking it all.)

Her parents and a number of Lisas friends convinced her to leave this scumbag and the empty life he was giving her. She moved to upstate New York, and came to accept the Lord as her personal savior. She went to work in a halfway house for runaway kids with stories much like her own and seemingly had beaten the terrible addiction that had cost her so much. In the winter of 1990 she spun out of control on an icy road and was killed instantly. Her body was flown back to California for interment in a Los Angeles area cemetery.

Her funeral was filled with the tragedy and grief that comes when a young one is taken so early in life and shows so much promise. Grief stricken teenagers, weeping parents and grandparents, sobbing ex-classmates. Her coffin was a rose pink colorI have never seen one like it before or since. Her 16 year old cousin read aloud a poem likening God to vengeful, secretive plotter devoted to stealing Lisa from us; in short, it was a simply horrific experience.

The pastor who was performing the funeral mass was simple, direct, and eloquent in his explanation of life from the way God looks at it. I doubt that he was able to reach many of the teenagers present, given the inexperience youth has with grief and loss. We drove out to the cemetery for the interment, and I got out of my car and walked over to the graveside with my sister and her boyfriend.

As the pastor began his final words, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. Since my sister was standing behind me, I assumed it was she. I turned my head to the side slightly to show my displeasure at the interruption and turned back toward the grave, where the pastor was addressing the assembled mourners. At that point, I felt someone insistently tugging on my sport jacket. I was ticked off, and turned to face my sister and tell her off. There was no one standing behind me. The closest persons behind me were my sister and her boyfriend, about 10-15 feet away, both listening to the pastor, neither paying any attention at all to me. The large number of people around and behind them would seem to preclude a prankish stunt like this by a close friend of the deceased; in any event, she denies doing so to this day. Since then I have heard a number of theories, ranging from Lisas departed spirit having a joke on me to Satan trying to pull mourners away from God. I honestly don't know who or what it was, but I do know that my coat was tugged hard.