A Time To Mourn

This week I lost a grandmother. I learned of her passing from my cousin last Thursday night. I was getting ready to leave for Richmond for Andy's wedding. Now I would have to add on a trip to Nashville, for something much less joyous.

I wasn't quite sure how this would work. Mom wanted me to drive to Roanoke after the wedding on Saturday. But I just knew that I wouldn't be done until late in the evening. And I was right. Mom was wanting to get on the road to Nashville and drive during the night.

Didn't happen. I got to Roanoke around 11:30. That's PM if you're not keeping up. So we hit the road early Sunday morning and drove straight to the funeral home. I have a lot of fond memories of Nashville. It's where the majority of my family lives. And even though we were all gathered under sad circumstances, I like to think that more fond memories were made.

Here's one from way back: When we were kids, and my great-grandmother passed away, we came to the very same funeral home. Again, sad circumstances, but there's a story that us kids are able to laugh at to this day. Well, I laugh. April kind of twitches and gets a frightened look on her face. See, while the grown-ups were gathered upstairs, meeting and greeting fellow mourners, the cousins were downstairs in a snack area. Across the hall from this snack area was the coffin display showcase. Beyond that was a door labeled: EMPLOYEES ONLY. We heard a noise, so April, the trusting sibling that she was, asked me, her trustworthy older brother, what that room was for. "That's where they cut off the people's legs. That's why they only open the top half of the coffin." Scarred for life. Good times.

You never thought you'd have that much fun at a funeral, right? But what are the first three letters in FUNeral? I joke. I titled this entry "A Time To Mourn" because really that's what we did. Grandma will be missed. She had a great sense of humor that was passed on to just about the entire Peck family. What made it especially hard for me was that this comes just over a year after losing Dad. During her funeral, a recording of him singing How Great Thou Art was played. After that, I was done. October will really have some bad associations for me in the future. But I'm okay with that. Because I still know that Dad is in a better place. And now I know that Grandma is there with him. Probably giving him a hard time. You know, they're probably both dishing it out equally. They were always like that.