Thankyou blogfriends for your kind support...

It is great to see the support from blogfriends. If that wasn't a word, I just coined it thusly.

It has been a tough week. Monday my favorite Grandpa went to heaven- left this earth, and thus I will never to get to visit him in person again. I was quick to desire several mementos to remember him by- I selected these from his home in IA. Things I selected were- some small Dutch dolls, his glass milk pitcher, and his garden tools. I gathered old letters I had written during my high school days, which he had saved in a few drawers. I found an envelope that my Grandma had written on, (she went to heaven 4 days after our wedding) it held a paper I had written for a class, The paper was titled, "A Relationship I Cherish." This paper shared many of my great memories of my Grandparents.

I dreaded, absolutely dreaded going to the funeral. I felt that he could be alive in some form- for as long as the space existed between his last breath and that social and religious tradition, the funeral. I longed for his presence, his life in this world as I refused to accept reality. The night before the funeral I was up late studying for the other big thing in my life, my Marriage and Family Therapy test. I felt like I could just slowly study away the hours before that two o'clock appointment, that attempt at closure, and feared the speeding clock brought on by sleep.

I was almost left at the cemetery. Had it not been for my only girl cousin speaking up for my absence I would have still been there. I was busy when they boarded the "limousine" for the pallbearers, my cousins, brother, and DH and I. I was still gathering my own flowers from my Grandpa's flowers at his graveside. They were beautiful, lush red roses, and pure white delicate yet sturdy tulips, both surrounded in greenery and baby's breath. My Grandpa was always generous with the flowers he grew, and even though his green thumb wasn't responsible for these, I knew he would let me have them if he were there, and could tell me so. In a way he shared his flowers with me- just like always, like I remember.