Prelude to Grandma's Funeral, part 2

My apologies to all you Early-morning Blog Readers, I've been a little busy today, and didn't get back to the serious world of blogging until this afternoon.

So, my mother-in-law had scheduled her mother's funeral on my favorite holiday: Halloween. Which just goes to show you how egocentric she can be sometimes.

Yes, I do know that I am being very petty, but seriously: Who schedules a funeral for Halloween? I truly believe that is the first funeral I've ever attended on Halloween in my entire life. And I sincerely hope it's the last one! WTH? It's like scheduling one on Christmas! (Well, okay, not exactly; but, I mean......really?) I absolutely could not believe what I was hearing! Staring at the Wonder Hubby in disbelief, I asked, "Seriously? Halloween?" And he nodded at me. I had to bite my lips to keep from saying something extremely shallow and mean. I left him in the kitchen so I could go have my selfish snit in private.

If you've read this blog with any regularity at all (which would probably be pretty easy to do if I wrote in it more, huh?), you know that Halloween is, without a doubt my favorite holiday. Here's a link to last year's Halloween post for proof: (Click) Even last year, when the Boeing strike had reduced the Wonder Hubby's work week to three days, we still managed to add to our front yard graveyard/Halloween extravaganza. We had planned this year to spend the weekend and week before to adding lots more gravestones, spiders, creepy lighting and spooky noises to our collection for Wichita to dig on (You should pardon the expression :-P). We already had our stock of fabulous candy goodness to hand out (we have a reputation that we're justifiably proud of: That of being The House on the Block that Gives Out The Good Stuff), we'd purchased more lighting, we were in the middle of making more gravestones (I'll probably share the How-to's sometime next week, okay?)--in short, we were on the short strip to truly awesome Halloween flying!! And now, we wouldn't even be in town on The Day. This was unfair, this was crap, this was letting the terrorists win, this was Un-American!!! How could she??

She's like that, though. The World runs at her convenience, and you either accept that and deal with it, or you spend most of your life really mad at her. Which solves nothing, right? I mean, it's not really her fault--to a point. First, she was born on Christmas day, and Grandma once told me it took her years to realize that the whole world's hoopla on that day wasn't about her; plus, almost one month to the day after her birth, she contracted polio and damned near died; so, of course, her parents went a little overboard in their spoiling of her after she'd recovered (she wears leg braces to this very day as a result. AND deals with the cruel addition of Post-polio Syndrome). And while I am extremely happy that she did survive because, let's face it--no J, no Wonder Hubby; hence, no joy in my life, I really do wish that she would at least once in a while acknowledge the bigger world around her.

BUT--this wasn't about me, was it? Much as I really wanted to get an epic Grump on (something I am extremely good at--practice, practice, practice!), I really couldn't do that. If I had, that would only have confirmed my suspicions that I am, indeed, the Most Selfish Person in the World, and I don't really want that suspicion confirmed. This was not about intruding upon my fun, this was about paying tribute to Lachlan's grandmother. This was about her, not me; this was about Lachlan losing his last grandparent; only a human of the vilest swine persuasion could truly bitch about the situation. I knew this; I knew this; I knew this--yet, a part of me still wanted to be snippy. Down, Snip, down! I yelled at myself internally, and then went to seek out the Wonder Hubby to plot our trip.

Initially, J wanted us to come down the evening before Halloween because a car trip to southwest Oklahoma is a bit arduous from Wichita, KS. Especially if fibromyalgia is involved. She even offered to put us up in a motel--and while certainly not a Holiday Express, the motel in the tiny town that Lachlan grew up in did supply beds. But he'd told her we couldn't do that because we couldn't get anyone to take care of our pets that long. "Why not?" she'd asked him in a disbelieving tone. "Because it's a holiday weekend, and people already have plans," he'd replied, which was probably the first time it occurred to her that something else was going on that day. "Oh," she'd replied in that short way she has of conveying her unhappiness over any element, anytime, anywhere, that she can't control. Oh well. So, after a brief amount of continued chat (time, place, etc.), they hung up and we tried to get used to the idea of once again, our own personal plans going askew.

Seamus, our youngest son, an all-around good person and true American, had plans for a party Halloween night (so had we, for that matter), but he cheerfully volunteered to hang around the house long enough to distribute candy to all the demons/fairies/witches/ghosts/Republicans that came to our door during the usual heaviest hours of operation. It's times like these when you realize that your kids grow up to be good humans in spite of you, not because of you. Lachlan and I made a list of things to do: Search the inner reaches of our darkest storage closets for something appropriate to wear to a funeral (After all, the Zombie costumes we'd planned to wear to the Halloween party were hardly appropriate, were they?) Get said appropriate clothes to the cleaners. Tune-up car for obnoxiously long trip. Purchase sundry and other items needed for completion of trip (snacks, drinks, maybe a map?, OMG, I don't have a decent bra--how did that happen? You know, the basics...)

Somehow, we got done what needed doing. All that was left was the actual event itself.

More tomorrow. Same bat time, same bat station