Homeward Bound, part 1

Well, we made it home from Grandpa's funeral in Georgia. And although there were many sad, emotional periods, there were many joyful moments too. In the flurry of activity of packing, canceling the mail for the week, transferring funds, etc, I wondered how this long trip go for all of us. There would be the 15 hour trip in the car going to and from Georgia, the 5 hour visitation, and funeral. I wondered how stressful this would be on our girls. I felt bad that Katie's birthday was kind of put on the sidelines, and even worse yet, that we wouldn't have time to rejoice in the commemoration of Easter, and Jesus' resurrection. And yet, everything went as smoothly as possible.

We arrived on Saturday evening, after getting up at 3 AM to prepare for blazing through the 10 inches of snow we had (yes...10 inches over the Easter weekend). Thankfully, we arrived safely and were greeted by the warm air (which of course didn't last long, because we happened to hit a pocket of cold air while we were there). We were then quickly summoned to go to my Aunt's house where tons of food had been donated. We had a great lasagna dinner with family, and prepared ourselves for the events to come. Our kids however, had fun running after my aunt's two pug nosed Shiitzus. All week long the grand kids wanted to make sure they could go back to Janie's house so they could play with the dogs.

The next day we made it to the Easter service. It was moving and emotional, and just the start of tears for the day, but we were glad to have gone. Fortunately we had enough time for Easter pictures and lunch, although we had to forgo the Easter egg hunt (which actually no one missed, I think I just hyped it up in my mind, but really we were fine without it). We went on to the visitation, where we viewed my grandfather's body. I was a little scared to see him, and even more scared to explain death to my 3 year old, but again it went well. Kyra had questions, and I answered them to the best of my ability, and in the end she shrugged her shoulders and continued to play with her cousins. It's funny how matter of fact they can be. The girls twirled their dresses and took off their shoes, while Katie could be found munching on the cookies from the adjacent visitation, and waving to her great grandpa while saying "shh..he's sleeping". They eased the tension and brought joy to many visitors. They were pure life in time of death.