Even the rabbi said she'd never laughed so much at a funeral.

It was a fitting tribute to my aunt, Paula Ruth Mitchel, the funniest member of our family. She died in Florida at age 87 and was buried Monday in her hometown of Pittsburgh.

This prompted an in-gathering of relatives which, in turn, prompted lots of spinning of family lore. So what began as a sad, tearful event that robbed us of Aunt Paul wound up as several days of hysterical laughter, broken by the somber ride to the cemetery on a gray, bone-chilling day worthy of a Bergman film.

Throughout the weekend, family stories were told and retold for the younger generation that didn't know Paula Ruth in her prime.

Uncle Roy, her husband of 65 years, talked about noticing a dent in his brand new car and finding a note on the windshield. "Sorry I hurt your car," it said. "Please call this number." Grumbling under his breath, he drove a little way before realizing it was his home phone.

He called the number. Aunt Paul answered. "Is this the person who hurt my car?" he said. Aunt Paul replied, "You'll have to talk to my lawyer," and hung up. He called again and asked for the lawyer. "You'll have to talk to my husband," she said. Click.

My cousin Jodi, Paula's daughter, recalled her grade school years, when her mom would dress up in a wild muumuu and oversize shoes on the wrong feet, black out a couple of teeth with Black Jack chewing gum, stand on the street and stop Jodi's friends to ask if they'd seen her.

Paula's younger son, Ira, began his eulogy by saying, "Dear Mom, thanks for adopting me." He wasn't really adopted, but Paula Ruth used to tell him he must have been because he was so inscrutable. Hence, my father's name for him: Mysterious Mo.

Ira also thanked his mother for doing the human seat belt move, throwing her right arm across his chest whenever she hit the brakes. This, he said, came in handy with his dates. His list went on until we were all howling and wiping our eyes.

It turned out that Ira had read the eulogy to his mother on his last visit to her bedside. He teared up at the end, he said -- until Aunt Paul sat up and sang like Eva Peron, "Don't cry for me, Ira Mitchel."

Her grandson Charlie, now 22 and 6-feet-5-inches tall, recalled that the thing his grandmother loved most was watching him run around naked as a two-year-old, "so she could see my tushy." He allowed that stripping off his clothes at the funeral home and running down the aisle would be his greatest tribute to her, if the thought it weren't so horrifying.

My mother, the indomitable Edna Belle, remembered coming home from school with her sister and having nothing to do. "Let's laugh," one of them would say. They'd take turns saying "ha" and "ha ha" and "ha ha ha" until they were truly convulsed with laughter.

Inevitably, the stories moved on to their mother, my Nana, who lived to 99 and was so short she looked like a polka dot with feet. Nana could strip a chicken with a knife and fork until you'd swear the carcass had been run through a dishwasher, and she never missed an episode of "Guiding Light."

One day she called Aunt Paul at work. "Charlotte's dead!" she announced. Aunt Paul, thinking of her cousin Charlotte, exclaimed "What do you mean, Charlotte's dead! What happened?" Nana replied, "She was shot!"

"Who would shoot Charlotte?" Aunt Paul cried, until Nana said it was in the soap opera.

Then there was Nana's sister, my great-Aunt Ethel, whom Paula Ruth sometimes seemed to be channelling. If you had to wake Ethel from a nap, you stood far to one side because her first act was to claw the air toward your face with a vengeance.

"Aunt Ethel, it's me!!!" Jodi would say. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry," she'd reply. "I didn't mean to scare you." Silence. Then, "Always remember -- go for the eyes."

Of course we had to talk about Nana's brother, my great-Uncle Lou, a former boxer who fought under the name Young Goldie. Uncle Lou took a few too many blows to the head over the years. Later in life he was running numbers (he hid the slips inside his tie), drinking at every opportunity and living over a saloon owned by someone named Junior. Once, when he was in the hospital, Aunt Paul went through his pockets and found a slip of paper that read: "My name is Lou Gold. If anything happens to me, Junior did it."

Uncle Lou didn't know the names of any of the grand-nieces or nephews. All the girls were Mabel and all the boys were Chief. Whenever he was about to leave, he'd say, " See you Tuesday." Which Tuesday? "Pick any Tuesday next week." Where? "I don't know, but be there early."

Aunt Paul was there early compared to her mother, who lived 12 years longer than she did. But after years of bearing up under awful pain without ever losing her sense of humor, she told her family she was ready to go. As she said to her oldest son, Gershon, on his last visit, "I'm not doing humanity any good like this."

So she left us, but with the great gift of laughter. We'll always miss her, but five'll get you 10 that when her soul ascended, God found a note on his windshield.

"Sorry I dented your handiwork. Please call 555-1HE-AVEN."

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