in pencil skirts and power shoes,
we clifford girls filed into a full chapel.
many relatives, neighbors, former colleagues, church members, and friends.
amazing speakers,
great stories
for a dear old man.
a retired veteran and fireman
means the circumstance comes with great pomp.
just seeing the tribute, and dear gifts from old friends was enough to start me.
and the happy news is the news that this isn’t the end.
i told gramma jean she wasn’t allowed to wear black.
she looked stylin, and enjoyed her family around her with a smile on her face.
my own dear granny would call her one dandy lady.
which is of the highest rank of endearment i know.
the sad news is, that cc and i will always remember this day
as the day we made one poor parenting decision.
after the beautiful service,
{that we surprisingly made it through with a busy 1-year-old},
we stopped to grab the little tired/hungry/wet kid something more solid than the 2% milk from jack-in-the-box that he downed hours earlier.
cc waited impatiently for some teenager at the grocery deli to make sandwiches
{instead of handing him a ready-made something}
since we had only minutes to be to the burial site.
of course boss fell asleep in the car, and thus wouldn’t be eating it anyway…
then we proceeded to hit every. red. light.
and missed the entire ceremony at the cemetery.
apparently the firemen were all there,
the firetruck was parked on the hillside
where all the family stood watching,
like a scene from a movie.
there was a 21-gun salute,
and aunt valerie played her beautiful bagpipes.
lucky for us, on that beautiful hill where grandpa was buried,
on a perfect day in northern LA,
for only us few,
the bagpipe genius played again.
a tender mercy to remind us:
it really isn’t the end of the world.
and what a happy thought that is.
