Sending Grandma Home

Today we, my mom and dad and sister and her husband, went to Grandma's funeral in Gore, OK. As far as funerals goes it was nice, a fitting tribute to her but it was three hours away. That was the hardest thing about today, was getting up and getting dressed for the funeral and leave the house at 8 a.m. Then have the return trip.

Oh wait that wasn't the hardest part, getting in my brother-in-law's pick up gracefully that was the hardest part. My 5'3" mother had a harder time than me so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Our family is somewhat spread out and we haven't seen the extended the family very much over the years and my sister has seen everyone even less due to her defection to Texas.  So when my aunt came up to us, I knew Kim didn't know her and I, not knowing really how to handle it, said: "this is my sister, Kim." Then my aunt said "I am Lou." Awkward! I could have handle it better but you never plan for these things.

The good thing was that I don't think Lou recognized Kim either. Next time I will say something like, "Aunt Lou this is my brother-in-law (who she's never met before)." At least it would have clued Kim and Lou in. It is odd being introduced to your aunt who you've known since you were a baby.

I did like the fact that we held the funeral at the church next to the cemetery and we didn't have to drive to the grave side. But that little church was straight out of the 1800s. There was a respectable showing for a 97 year old who has out live most of those who knew her in life. One real perk of the day was that the cemetery was deck out for memorial day with an explosion of flowers. Grandma would have liked that.

Mom was walking through cemetery reading the headstones of all her mother's mother's family. She kept saying "oh there's Pres, and there's Walt." I asked if she thought that all these were still alive, since these where Grandma's uncles? She really hadn't thought about it and not living in that town, she hadn't processed who had gone before her mom. It was like walking down your family's memory lane of people you didn't know existed, oddly interesting.

I didn't get to visit with my cousins much as that is a tough place to catch up with the sadness of the day and the sinking of the heels in the ground of the cemetery.

It is 8:30 pm and I think I could straight to bed and sleep straight through to the morning. These are the hard parts of life, we made it through this one. Now we need a little boring. 

Enough for now...