Uncle Pip's Seven Funerals

The best part of Ole Uncle Pip’s funeral stunts were watching the funerary staff grapple with the circus as we challenged every preconceived notion of what a true “Celebration of Life” could look like.

Boys and girls, men and women, and every gender in between strode confidently in a face full of stage makeup to attend the seventh funeral of their longest and most beloved clown: Pipplio the Peculiar to those in the audience, but Ole Uncle Pip to us in the troupe. While no one in the troupe knew how old Pip was for there wasn’t a member among us to predate Pip, the ongoing poll placed him anywhere between 70 and 110 years old.

This funeral declared Pip a well-rounded 88 years old, just a few days shy of 89. I knew the unlikelihood of this sign ringing true since his funeral six months ago placed him at 76 years old, but as someone whose money was on 88, I couldn’t help the involuntary contort as my lips twisted up to match the painted smile on my face.

As the closest thing Pip had to a blood relative, I had the satisfaction of being in on the stunt this time—whatever it was, as I was not yet privy to the details. Over the years, I’ve received countless vague instructions to aid in Pip’s new acts—always wanting my reaction to a performance to be genuine for the audience. For this service, per special request, I arrived at the parlor early and watched the parade of circus folk whom I called family, emerge for the party. It never gets old for the excitement among the troupe has never dimmed. We were performers through and through.

While the troupe brought life to the drab, dated home to celebrate my uncle’s seventh death, I watched the funeral workers attempt to tamp down their surprise. The shocked looks on their faces suggested that Auntie Tabitha’s Funeral Home and Parlor situated in Southern Arizona had never looked more festive in the 93 years since its founding.

For the Twilight Cruise & Circus Corps—the famous travelling circus who separated themselves from the mainstream performing acts by driving cross-country in a caravan of sparkling midnight blue 1950s Rolls Royces—the only thing that was allowed to come close to a black were the cars that transported their bursts of color. Ever since Papa Larry and his Lioness wore black in a special, one-night-only act in 1983, which resulted in Papa Larry turning into Larry the Limbless, the color black had become a taboo. After twelve amicable years working together, for Larry’s lioness to turn on him mid-performance could only be described and explained as the birth of a superstition they were made fantastically aware of by the fates. Since, their wardrobes were nothing but cascades of brilliancy. Travelling only at night, their midnight Rolls Royces crept from town to town blending into the starry sky before purging its rainbow clad contents.

Like butterflies emerging from cocoons, tens of colorful performers tumbled out of a string of vintage cars. Each act sported no less than three colors amidst their shimmering and feathery ensembles. In every pair of arms were either vibrant wildflowers, dancing ribbons, or some sort of strange-looking musical contraption which only hinted at a traditional instrument. Despite the variety and chaos that swirled around the troupe, the strange music that overflowed from the cars grew melodically sweet as they all plucked and piped their individual battery of devices. Cheers and jeers were thrown around, ping-ponging off one to land on another before moving onto a third.

If this were a real funeral, the troupe might have dampened their presence to a degree, but this was Pip we were talking about. He’s held his own funeral in the last six states we’ve toured.

Other troupe members asked me why he started doing this, but, like them, I can’t get a word out of him on the subject. After he pops up from his simple casket, the crowd goes wild, he pays the home a gracious amount of money from tips and wages he’s saved over his vast career clowning, and he never speaks of the event again.

Pip has been in the troupe since at least 1969, which is when the second oldest troupe member, Lazy Susie with her two lazy eyes that could look independently in different directions, joined. She claimed he was much younger then, but still a grown adult at the time. When pressed, Lazy Susie would say he was anywhere from 15 to 50 years old. This was not helpful in the poll.

Once Uncle Pip declared I was his to keep, people started asking me what I thought of his age, but I was only a baby when Pip found me. In southern Arizona not too far from Pip’s current funeral, the troupe was hightailing it to Nevada to catch the bustling Las Vegas weekend crowd, when Pip made the whole caravan pull over on the side of a deserted road after he spotted a cardboard box sitting starkly in their headlights against the blank, desert backdrop. As he’d told me in the years to come, he suspected he was about to get a new cat or even a whole litter—he’d been lonely since his last cat passed away the previous year—but instead he found me.

I had apparently caused quite a stir among the troupe. Some members adamantly upholding the “Finder’s Keepers” way of being while others (typically the newly joined members of the troupe still acclimating to the lifestyle) wanted to turn me into the local officials for proper care and attention. Uncle Pip had won out, as he always had, and I stayed with them. How they were able to keep a baby without any ramifications or repercussions is still a mystery to me, though I suspect Uncle Pip holds more sway in the real world than he lets on.

For, on my sixteenth birthday, he presented me with legitimate papers: a passport, a state ID card for Arizona, and a Social Security Number. He even managed to get me a birth certificate, but it gave no indication of where I actually came from. My date of birth was marked for the day they found me and my name read Odette Odd—short for my stage name, Odette the Oddity. He said it was my right to have a place in this world and that if I wanted to, I should have the means and the choice to find myself outside of our caravan. Twenty years later and I’ve yet to feel any such desire. Uncle Pip and the troupe were my home.

When asked how he managed to provide me with a real life, he danced around the question just like he did his age and any remnant of his life before 1969, and, now, his funerals.

For his first funeral, the troupe was pissed. I was pissed. Unlike this seventh show, I wasn’t involved at all and had thought, just like the rest of us, that Uncle Pip truly had passed away. He had faked a heart attack, paid off a couple of actors to play EMTs, and set up the whole service through a pre-arrangement he had straightened out with the home in advance. The event was a shunted version of today’s festivities—one member even wore a distasteful gray to the service. Yet, halfway through my speech leading up to riotous rendition of “O he’s a jolly good fella” Uncle Pip pulled the sheet down from his shoulders to reveal a cosmically brilliant tie-dyed suit. Pip yawned and stretched. Thanking the group for coming, he climbed out of the casket, shook the hand of the Funeral Director, and walked off. We were livid. And yet, if anyone tried to approach him about it, Uncle Pip feigned a frustrating ignorance to the whole ordeal.

The second funeral was a tepid affair. Unsure if it wasn’t going to be a repeat of the previous one but afraid to act as though it were, the troupe attended with hesitance. This funeral was only different in one way from the previous funeral: there was a buffet in the middle of the service. The table was filled with foods from Taco Bell to Red Lobster all the way down to fine dining fit for royalty. Once Pip popped up from his casket in a fuchsia suit, we ate for hours and only when we had to be rolled out did we stop.

When the third funeral came around, since the buffet and time wore down at the anger, people were starting to look forward to the event. This event came with a special request: all in attendance were to wear their most enviable costumes—the timeless pieces and the fantastical one-of-a-kind jewelry. The crowd cheered when Pip rose from his casket in a jewel encrusted cerulean tux and the event turned into an all-evening ballroom soiree. Of course, on par with Uncle Pip’s unpredictability, the following funeral was the opposite. How he bribed the funeral home to allow a circus troupe to have a sleepover in their parlor was beyond me, but like the other events, Pip never mentioned it once it was over.

By the fifth funeral, not a member among us believed it wasn’t anything more than an absurd act put on by an absurd old man for our own entertainment.

In the fifth funeral home, around his casket, it looked like he’d bought out an entire local pawn shop. Heaps of jewelry and antiques piled around him with a sign that read: Free to Whomever. By the time Pip got up, wearing another sparkling suit this time in luscious lavender, and examined the piles, they were thoroughly picked over.

Come the sixth funeral, the buzz of excitement ran through them as they speculated when Uncle Pip would die again. Set for February 14th, Uncle Pip managed to find a particularly lively Funeral Home Director who was overzealous in leading the troupe through a comical round of speed-dating. Uncle Pip being the real winner as he hopped from his casket in a vibrant red tuxedo bedazzled in a hand-stitched floral pattern.

By now, the fanfare surrounding the dead clown who refused to stay dead was beyond our troupe. There was some outrage from the religious sectors in towns who claimed Pip was mocking their Lord and Savior, but mostly we were greeted by avid spectators who showed up with signs in support of the notorious clown funeral. Towns and cities across the country reached out in hopes of Pip choosing one of their funeral homes for his next stunt. But as much as the public demanded, these remained closed affairs despite the allure of a paying crowd.

I watched the last of the troupe filter from their cars into the home, the music and noise muffled as the doors closed behind them.

“Miss Odd?” the director asked, placing a light hand on my arm, “Are you ready?”

I nodded.

“You’ve been instructed to enter through the main entrance and walk directly up the straightway to the casket. Once the services are over, if you would be so kind to meet me in my office, there are a few things Mr. Pipplio wanted me to discuss with you.”

Strange, but then again everything my uncle did was strange. I’ve learned over the years to not ask questions that could ruin a truly spectacular surprise.

As I neared the doors, I noticed that the raucous music wasn’t just muffled, it had stopped altogether. Confusion ruffled my brow. Without legitimate reason, my heart dropped a few inches in my chest. This was wrong.

I opened the door and the troupe parted like the sea. The instruments divorced from their fingers and mouths. The ribbons were flaccid by their sides and the flowers hung limp. At a glance, there was nothing unusual about this service. There was no parade of little monkeys in hats or fat ladies singing. No feast or pile of gold. Just a bare room flanked with large cardboard posters of Uncle Pip and me throughout my 36 years with Pip laid at the end of the long room. My surroundings were so quiet that for what felt like the first time in my life I could hear myself breathing. The frowns on my troupe’s faces contradicted the smiling face paint that cracked on their cheeks.

“This way,” the director instructed, gently. I hadn’t heard her come in behind me. Was this the gimmick? I wondered. Pip always did have a visceral need to surprise the troupe, was the surprise a regular funeral to make everyone once again think he was actually dead, but then he’d spring up like a fresh chicken in a multicolored tux before the fireworks?

The truth settled into my stomach like a sack of rocks the closer I got to the open casket. His legendary sheet pulled up right to his chin, hiding his death costume.

“Before we begin,” the director said as we stopped shoulder to shoulder in front of my uncle, “I was instructed to introduce this funeral in honor of his pride and joy, Miss Odette.” With that she pulled back the sheet to reveal a dark, black tux.

The room gasped. Men and women alike fainted. Children screamed. Instruments dropped to the floor in strange, mangled noises. Uncle Pip did not move.

The room grew stale. The director, having executed her duty, excused herself saying she’d see me after the service. I stared at my Uncle as the pieces started to fall together: pride. I was his pride—his seventh deadly sin. And the last one. He had gone through them all to set us up for his final act.

Feet began to shuffle, and one by one the members of my troupe rounded the casket and paid their respects to Uncle Pip before giving me a hug and slipping money into my palm. I didn’t understand until it clicked that this was the real funeral. Uncle Pip was 88 years old. I had won the poll.

Blanketed in a heavy gray overtone, the following hours were a slurry of documents and signatures. Waiting back in the Director’s office were an attorney and several of her sharply-dressed colleagues. This is where I learned that my Uncle denied dialysis. Where I learned he needed his final acts to be full of life and cheer before he left us. Left me. It was here where I acquired all the legal documents of the circus—deeds nobody ever knew he possessed—and my uncle’s never-before-spoken-of fortune.

Overnight, I became the proud owner of the Twilight Cruise & Circus Corp. and the confused owner of heavily invested stocks and ‘sure-fire’ bonds that my Uncle had been squirreling money into for decades to support the troupe’s future—to take care of us when he was gone.

In the following hazy weeks, Ole Uncle Pip was cremated, and per his request, his remains were scattered in the same location where he found me 36 years ago.