There’s a definition that’s been coined in the Midwest that, if used anywhere else, would cause even the most “open-minded” liberal city-slicker to wince when mentioned.

This comes from personal accounts with real Midwesterners, who, because of their town being unusually under populated, and with an unusually high elderly demographic, are faced with death daily. Therefore, they attend perpetual, sometimes thrice-daily funeral services.

The kind people in this particular area refer to this phenomenon as, “McFunerals” – referring to the fast-food drive-thru rapidity in which the people of small town Treynor, Iowa, are able to attend multiple funerals in between their morning coffee and little Wendell’s soccer game.

Although devastating, with a 900-count population who all live to be well into their nineties, the regularity of death is inevitable and, according to the few who were brave enough to admit it, kind of a time-consuming pain in the you-know-what.

Every week, the Treynor townsfolk practically prep their respectable, black attire daily, like the firemen down at the station do with their gear, in preparation of an emergency bucket kicker to add yet another task to the day’s events.

In this town, it is the pair of jeans that meet the demise of hungry closet moths, as they rarely see the light of day. The black suit, on the other hand, visits the dry cleaners with enough familiarity as the housewives at knitting parties.

In a settlement this diminutive, everyone knows everyone’s everything, so missing your barber’s brother’s nephew’s funeral is small town social suicide. Being absent in that church foyer for the third time that day is enough to be communally ostracized, so what if your wife just had your first child?

If ol’ Gertrude, Ethel, Abby and Amos notice your lack of presence, they know you’re the type of disrespectful hoodlum capable of missing their interment, and are still alive to give you grief about it.

After attending funeral number two last Sunday, lifelong resident, Gary Guttau, put it bluntly when he said, “I’m gonna start telling everyone to stop dying because I have no time to do my work anymore.”

The hassle, however, is only a small price to pay when you live among an unguarded, warm and intimate group of people who are kind, selfless and masterful at culinary skills.

They just happen to have looming expiration dates.