My grandfather was buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. I love this place. I hope to be buried there. It was a beautiful afternoon being up there with my family. We have many family members buried in this section. It was lovely.
Dad: always the teacher and answerer of all questions. Megan and Noah were literally fighting about who got to ask dad questions, as you can see Noah won and Megan is annoyed.
My mom, grandma and aunts.
Megan was very sweet and went around cleaning up other head stones.
The pallbearers, also all my boy cousins.
Elisa was like I pioneer woman! She flew to Utah without her husband and with her 2 young sons. she carried one on her back and one on her hip. They were pretty hard and she handled them with love and patience. I enjoyed just watching her. To watch the evolution of self centered teenagers into self sacrificing loving parents is beautiful and amazing.
My grandmother broke my heart. She said to me before she died: "I have never been alone. I went straight from my father's home to my husbands home."
I love my little family. I felt very loved and cared for by them this weekend. I was a mess from breaking my foot and, in truth, they didn't care much about my grandpa's death. Which actually really hurt my feelings, not that it was their fault or they were being rude, it was just a reminder that I didn't facilitate a relationship or loving feelings towards family like I wanted to. But they totally stepped up and at a minimum made it clear they were sad for me and cared about me. They were the selfless, self sacrificing people on this trip. And as their mother, it felt so nice to see them take on that role.
Then we had a luncheon.
Me and my Grandma
I included both of these photos because the above one is cuter. But the one below is my grandma's "picture face" that we always tease her about.
We were both stuck in our chairs, her with her cane and me with my crutches, watching as everyone else cleaned up.
My grandma with her remaining siblings.
When the luncheon was over everyone started cleaning up. They gathered trash, the center pieces, table cloths and started putting up tables. One of the RS women came out and said "I have been in charge of doing the funeral luncheons for over 10 years and this is the first family that has ever stayed and helped clean up. It is obvious these are Wayne's grandchildren, that is what he would have done." I still don't believe her, I think a lot of people would clean up, it is part of our culture. But if she is telling the truth it validated my emotions and thoughts in all the previous funeral posts. Getting up and cleaning is second nature to almost every person in our family (there are a few exceptions :)
Even my children helped. Which was a tender mercy to me that maybe, even though they didn't grow up with family influence all around, that they still have some of the spiritual DNA in them
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