I'm halfway across the country from my home, attending my stepmother's funeral proceedings. "Viewing," mass, funeral procession, the whole nine yards.
The problem is I don't really have much good to say about her. She couldn't wait to get me out of her life when she married my late father, forbade him to speak to me for years, has never cared about my siblings and I, and essentially drank herself to death, leaving everything to her "real children" (the ones she had with my dad)....even things from my mother that she took possession of.
So I'm trying to jot down a collection of things I can talk to people about during these interminable formalities over the next couple of days. (This would also keep me from accidentally saying things like, "You're right, she was a lovely person....to YOU.")
Sounds like I'm bitter, and on some level I suppose I am, but I'm feeling pretty distant and beyond it all most of the time, just going through the motions. But I do need to talk to people if they talk to me.
What are some neutral conversation territories I can stay in?
How have you - when you needed to - stuck to the old adage, "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" ?