Well, it was an interesting trip. I initially told Mom I couldn’t go, because the funeral was scheduled for Wednesday and work was supposed to be really busy all week, but when I went in on Monday, my boss told me they’d manage without me if I needed to go. At first I thought, No, that’s okay, I know things are going to be rough here, but then I remembered when my aunt died in 2004 and I couldn’t afford to fly from LA - I was miserable the whole time everyone else was at the funeral. I decided to accept his offer and go with my family.

When I got home Monday night, Dad wasn’t home because he was getting the tires rotated/balanced/pressurized and Mom was dropping the dog off at the vet’s for boarding. I hadn’t packed yet, so I had to figure out what to wear and take along. We headed out around 7:30-8 pm, intending to drive about six hours, which would be about halfway, then stay the night somewhere and finish the drive on Tuesday, arriving in the afternoon and attending the viewing at the funeral home.

Things didn’t quite work out that way. Around 11 pm, we were nearly to Bowling Green, KY when a loud rumble accompanied by unwanted vibration interrupted everything. Mom had been driving in the middle lane, so it took a little time to get over to the shoulder of the Interstate, but when we did, we were within eyeshot of the Bowling Green exit. We spent more time than we wanted to spend staring at the Gander Mountain and Camping World store, let me tell you. Fortunately, Mom & Dad have AAA membership, so Dad called them and they sent a guy in a tow truck to change the tire. We all know how, but tire changing is messy, unpleasant work, even if it hadn’t been cool and windy and on the side of I75 with cars and semis blowing by at 70 mph. Thus, AAA - a very good investment, IMO. (Actually, I have several “Thank Heaven for AAA” stories - this is just the most recent)

Anyway, we only had a “doughnut” spare, not a real spare wheel/tire, so we could only go a few miles (and not over 50 mph, though the guy told us we should really stay under 35). As a result, we ended up staying in Bowling Green, much closer than we’d intended to stop. In the morning, we found a Firestone tire shop. They told Dad that the wheel was not, in fact, damaged - most of the side had blown out of the tire, making it look like the wheel had also been mangled, but it ended up just being a new tire we needed. Mom and my brother and I sat in the waiting area, reading and sometimes discussing our respective books and magazines. A few people came and went, and we were joined by a lady who seemed to be my parents’ age, or maybe a little older. She sat quietly by the TV, and seemed to be mostly ignoring us. Eventually Dad came back announced that the tire was changed, he’d paid for everything, and “Who’s ready to go somewhere and eat?”

The question was largely rhetorical, as that was already the plan, so we just started gathering whatever we’d brought in with us and getting up to leave. The lady by the TV raised her hand. We found this hilarious, and actually would have taken her to eat with us if she’d wanted, but she declined. In general, we’d have to say that the people we met in Bowling Green were great.

Unfortunately, the disruption to our schedule meant we missed the visitation/viewing at the funeral home, as we arrived in the area just as the funeral home was closing. The ugly weather that swept Alabama and Tennessee was behind us, and the rain hit us sometime mid-day, continuing up with us the rest of the way to Michigan. Apparently it had been raining for some time throughout the midwest, because all the rain ditches and some of the low-lying fields were flooded. Sometime during the night Tuesday, it froze, and everything was well-coated in snow and ice the next morning. Frozen cattails are a funny sight, you know? The roads were plowed, but the snow didn’t stop, all day, so it was a constant battle to keep the roads passable. Schools were out.

My great-aunt’s funeral was moved from the funeral home to the church, not because of the snow, but because the funeral of a third cousin I never met was being held there, and they could only hold one funeral at a time. There’s something really odd about finding out there’s a distant, never-met relative being buried in a ceremony held where you expected to be mourning nearer, more familiar kin.

It was all very appropriate; pink always was her color, and the roses were definitely her thing. The snow was still falling heavily as we drove to the cemetery, so the graveside service was held in a small chapel instead of actually beside the gravesite, and they handed out roses from the floral arrangement. There was a flag, too, because my great-aunt, like her brother (my grandfather), served in World War II. She was a nurse, he was a drill sergeant.

We spent the rest of the day with family, wondering if we’d be able to drive home Thursday, since the snow wasn’t stopping. It finally stopped sometime in the middle of the night, having snowed approximately a full 24 hours, and fortunately, our neighbor had a snowplow, or we’d have been unable to get out of the garage. We got a later start than we wanted, but the drive back to Alabama was much less eventful than the drive up, and we got in around 11-11:30 pm Thursday night.

I was very tired, and didn’t really want to go to work Friday, but I did, because I’m a responsible person and that’s what responsible people do. It was chaos. Apparently my boss had stayed at work the entire night Thursday night, working on a job that had to be ready by 7 am Friday, so he wasn’t in Friday. Don’t blame him a bit; staying all night and trying to be functional the next day doesn’t work very well, which I know from personal experience. There were so many other jobs that had to be done Friday that we were working at full speed from our respective start times until about 4:30-4:45 pm, when things thinned out enough that there was actually time for us to check on each other and see if there was anything we could do to help with the remaining had-to-be-Friday job. Of course, that was shortly before one of my co-workers would leave for the day, and long after the other should have been able to leave, but yeah - long, rough day at the end of a long, rough week for everyone.

On a humorous sidenote, we had an appointment with our hairstylist Friday night, and as Dad was wearing his suit from work, she joked about him being just back from a funeral.   His past positions haven’t usually required quite so much formality of dress, so it’s a change from what she’s used to seeing.  She was quite chagrined to find out we really were just back from a funeral, though not quite as immediately back as she’d meant.  It probably wouldn’t have been as funny if it weren’t for the fact we’ve known her for years, but we have, and it was.