I am sitting in the Dallas Love Field Airport right now. I got here almost three hours ago. I should have been back in OKC an hour ago...
My grandpa had been pretty sick for a while, and he passed away on Tuesday morning. So in a whirl wind, we packed up and headed down to Berwick, Louisiana on Wednesday and the funeral was yesterday. So we are heading back home today. We were lucky enough to not have to drive the 700 mile trip, and got to fly stand-by on Southwest. All flights have gone well until the final flight today, it was probably too good to be true to think that we would all get home before 3:30 today, and as we were standing in line to board the flight they called Karen's name out, and were going to bump her to the 5:25 flight.
It must have been a conspiracy, that Jen and Karen and Billy all rode to the airport together. They must have know that we would be one seat short coming home, because they are all probably home by now and I am still stuck in Dallas. As the lone occupant of my car, I decided to take one for the team and sit here an extra three hours and wait until the next flight.
I was so looking forward to picking the kiddos up from the rec center this afternoon a little early and getting to have a little mom time with them. Oh well, such is my luck with airplanes and airports.
I don't have any more grandparents. It's kinda weird in a feel-like-an-orphan kind of way. Not that I am an orphan, but it's weird to think that a good amout of my history is gone. My mom's dad died before I was born, and her mom died almost 15 years ago, but the people on my dad's side of the family live for a long time. My grandma passed last fall, and how my grandpa is gone. Even though we weren't close anymore, I miss who he was to me when I was little.
We traveled to Berwick, Louisiana, which is less than 100 miles from New Orleans for the funeral and burial. Which, it turns out was the fastest funeral/burial ever. The service at the funeral home lasted all of 15 minutes and then it took about 15 to drive to the cemetary, and then all of about 15 minutes there with the military portion of the service, including the 21 gun salute (which was not really 21 guns, because there were only six guns, but who's counting), and then it was on to lunch.
My grandpa had been married to his current wife for about 25 years, and it was mostly her family down in Louisiana that we finally meet this week. Let me just say that they do things very differently down in Louisiana. Starting with the liquor/wine aisle in CVS. We sure don't have that in Oklahoma. Then when we went out for drinks yesterday with our new family members, Jen got to take a to go cup with her margarita in it from the first stop to the second. Really? Why can't we have laws like that in Oklahoma? Oh yeah, I forgot for a second that I live in the buckle of the bible belt, bluest state in the nation. Oh well, a girl can dream, can't she.
I'll take the good with the bad this week, and I am sure hoping to see some of my newly extended family again soon. I could go to Louisiana again, my hair didn't really like it much, but I sure had fun. Fun at a funeral, that sounds so wrong, but I am sure that my grandpa would have liked it.
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