What was supposed to be a somber and dignified event to bid farewell to a loved one has instead turned into a heartbreaking scene of utter bedlam: This funeral has devolved into people loudly trying to outbid each other for the sneakers the corpse is wearing.
Just awful. This should be a celebration of a man’s life, not a craven contest for who gets his shoes.
The tragic trainwreck started just minutes ago at the Rolling Meadows Funeral Home in West Hartford, Connecticut, where mourners at the memorial service for Jerry Seaborne noticed that the deceased was wearing a pair of lightly used New Balance tennis shoes. Jerry’s son was in the middle of eulogizing his father when a voice in the back of the room shouted, “I’ll give you $30 for the shoes the dead guy’s wearing.” According to witnesses, this opening bid on the dead man’s shoes had come from his brother, 83-year-old Daniel Seaborne.
New bids for Jerry’s sneakers then followed in rapid succession. His daughter-in-law Rita bid $35, which was immediately topped by his cousin Lance, who dramatically raised the bid to $250. Within minutes, nearly everyone at the funeral was shouting bids for the corpse’s shoes, driving the bid up to over $600.
We’d say we feel bad for Jerry’s immediate family, but his wife and four children have also all started screaming bids for his sneakers. They’re making the whole situation worse. His youngest daughter Jordana even shouted that her late father “deserved to go in the ground barefoot” before placing a bid of her own for $800.
So sad. Can’t the poor guy just rest in peace?
Unfortunately, the heated bidding war over this dead man’s sneakers is showing no sign of stopping any time soon. The bids have now escalated to more than $10,000, and some of the mourners have offered to trade in their cars for a chance to walk home in the corpse’s sneakers. Here’s hoping that someone wins the auction soon so that some semblance of decorum can be restored to the proceedings and the departed can get the funeral service he deserves.
