Finality

I didn't feel like posting anything yesterday.
We finally laid my Father to rest.

That was a very long week that I am glad is finally over.

True to form it was a clusterfuck to the last minute, the very word my Father would have used to describe it no less.

After the service was over and the funeral procession took off to head towards Willamette National Cemetery, confusion reigned.

Confusion continued after we got there and when the final directions were given at the cemetery as to which drive to turn off and wait at for the hearse it got downright comical.


Nobody knew what the fuck was going on and there was a bunch of us standing in the road when word went out that when the hearse went by we were to get back in the cars and follow it.

Pretty soon here comes the hearse.
It goes by and all these cars are trying to pull off the side of this narrow lane and follow it and the next thing ya know we are all just sitting there not moving.

Then the funeral director starts walking down the line telling everyone to back up against the side of the lane again.
This is causing people to basically parallel park while backing up on a hill, in traffic.
What a fucking mess that was.

Apparently much like NASCAR, the hearse needed a warm up lap and we had to wait for it to come around again and turn left instead of right at the top of the hill.

My dad would have laughed his ass off at that.
We finally got to the little shelter and the Honor guard took over.

I have to stop here and offer my heartfelt thanks to those people.
They did a fantastic job.

I thanked a couple of them on the way in as I could.

It was a gorgeous day, thank goodness for that.

They did the three shot volley and the flag ceremony, the preacher said his piece and then at the very end, us boys who were the pall bearers at the church were supposed to lay our buttoneers they had given us on top of the coffin.

I reached over to my lapel and promptly got stuck real good by the pin that was supposed to be holding the flower, which was no where to be found.

Perfect ending.

I figured the shoulder harness for the seat belt had knocked it off and while everyone was standing around I hauled ass in those slick soled fucking dress shoes back to the rig to find it.

No dice.

Whatta ya do?

The Honor Guard wheeled the coffin over to the hearse and loaded it up and away they went.

After I said my thanks and best wishes to all the folks who had come from out of town me and the wife got in the car and I back tracked to the place where I got out watching the hearse do time trials and couldn't find it there either.

I wrote it off and went up the hill, turned left and started to go home and there the fucking thing was, right in the road where I had been parked, right where I had just walked by it TWICE and didn't see it and twenty cars had rolled by without touching it.

I think someone was pulling a joke on me upstairs.

Probably the Old Man telling me not to take it so seriously would be my guess.

So anyways, it is done now.
There is the obligatory bullshit yet to come but I ain't interested in a bunch of fucking horse shit right now. My manners have pretty much been used up for a while.
Just leave me the fuck alone.

To tell ya the truth, I haven't really had time to grieve yet and I need to do that on my own time without a bunch of shit distracting me.

I'll never forget what my Old Man told me once about death and funerals, I thought he was being a heartless sonofabitch at the time but now I think I see what he meant when he told me , you don't cry.

You don't cry when someone dies, you take care of fucking business.

When it's all said and done and they are in the ground, then you go home and cry where no one can see you.

Stoic bastard, I often wondered how he got that way. I'm sure it wasn't pleasant, Old School for damn sure.

So now I have all this grief rammed down tight that I haven't dealt with yet and I will process that ,it's not that his death was a big surprise after all the shit he went through the last few months.
Unexpectedly sudden but not something I didn't see the possibility of.

He lived to be 76 years old, it was just his time.

It will take a while but life goes on and dying is part of living , for damn sure my situation is not unique.

I was reminded of this fact when I saw three other funerals going on up there today.