Vince ended up taking Drake home to AZ for a few days. We had some work that he needed to do there anyways, so headed back to AZ for a couple days. Drake wanted to be able to come back for the funeral though also so it was a quick trip. I stayed in Riverside and helped with the prep work for the funeral, clean and help take care of stuff with the house, etc.
It's amazing all the work that goes into a funeral. After going thru 2 of them in a month, you would think it would be logistically easier...but it was just as equally difficult. My heart aches for people that have to do this alone, or with no help. Luckily, we have a family that really comes together in times like these and works well together to get things done. I worked on the obituaries (Riverside & Fargo papers), the programs, and the slide shows to show at the both the funeral and reception.
It was definitely a time of reflection though because I spent a TON of time scanning all the old photos from their house. Not only to put together slide shows, but also so that everyone would have "copies" of them. It was such a intimate glimpse into their lives though...all the way back to when they were kids. Finding high school pictures and notes that friends wrote in their yearbooks was such a look into the people they were before they were "Mom & Dad" and "Gramma & Papa".
While I was not surprised at anything I found, it was a good reminder of some of the happy moments in their younger lives. I am sure there are millions that we never heard about, or ever see pictures of. However, finding things that showed that Papa was such a jokester and kinda the class clown in high school was hilarious. His classmates couldn't wait to tell (write) how much they would miss his jokes and messing around with him in the halls. While he loved to tell us how hard life was when he had to "walk to school in the snow, barefoot, with no jacket, over cactus, uphill both ways"...yes, evidently there was cactus in North Dakota that he HAD to walk over.....he forgot to tell us how he was the class clown! Or that everyone loved him...or that he was in plays, or how he played on the football team (even though there were only like 3 games a year...because there were only like 3 schools in the state!), and was the basketball team manager....and being in Sears catalog for selling wolf furs with his brothers. Gramma didn't tell us about her experience going to Teachers College, and how that was. Or going to school most of her life with some of her cousins...and being in plays of her own. We didn't get to benefit from hearing or seeing all of those fun things they did growing up in small farm towns. I don't remember ever seeing pictures of Gramma when she was younger or in high school. She was beautiful...and I was just now seeing these pictures for the first time! Seeing what her friends were writing about her...and them wishing her luck on marrying her high school boyfriend....Haha!! Guess that didn't work out too well :) Good for me that Papa stole her away!! But the whole experience of going thru all this stuff was a great peek into their younger lives!
So, in between scanning pictures, running errands to get stuff for the reception, watering plants and mowing lawns.....I did have some time to grieve. I think I was still in a mode of getting the opportunity to see their past, and being able to be such a part of this whole experience, that I wasn't actually missing them yet. I was just sad....but I wasn't yet overwhelmed with the emptiness that I would be experiencing later on. I didn't yet know how much I would start to hurt for them, and miss them, and wish to just see or talk to them again. There is a hole in my heart slowly growing right now, that probably wont ever be filled....but that I know I will be able to learn to deal with someday. And I know I'm not the only one.....
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