It's all over

Well, we buried my grandma this morning. She died on January 25th and we had to wait until now to bury her because there was a problem with the plots in the cemetary. Everything got worked out exactly as it should have and she's now resting where she always knew she would be, right next to her mom and dad. The space on the other side is reserved for my grandpa, and then that section of plots will be full.

Only our family was at the service, and it was, literally, about 5 minutes long. Just long enough for the "ashes to ashes" deal and the Lord's Prayer (half of us are lutheran, half presbyterian so we all said it differently) and then it was all done. Mark, the fabulous funeral director who is, I believe, the nicest man alive, asked if we wanted to stay and watch her be lowered into the ground. I did, of course, so we all stood around while the grave diggers and Mark worked the pulleys and put the casket into the liner, then cranked the handle and lowered my grandma into the ground. It was important for me to see that. After the last two months of thinking of her shut up in some storage place I needed to have visual proof that she was in the ground. I stayed until they filled the grave with dirt. We left before they finished completely and put the sod back over, but I would have waited until they did that too if my mom hadn't wanted to leave.

My grandpa wasn't ready to leave either. He kept walking around the cemetary and asked my mom to walk around and look at tombstones with him so that he could pick one out for him and grandma. He was stalling; he just didn't want to leave. Then when we got to my aunt's house everyone was cranky because we weren't there right away and they had to wait for us to eat.

I think I'll stop writing all of my entries about my grandma now, as fascinating as all of this must be to read about. I have to go to another funeral on Monday; a colleague's brother died of a brain tumor and several of us are driving to the funeral and the burial. Two burials in one weekend. I'm a seasoned funeral goer now.

Will write more soon, happier content, I promise.