The plan was to fly to Philly Thursday morning, drive to New Jersey, stay overnight, have Grandma’s funeral Friday morning, and be back in Atlanta at about 9:30 last night.
It almost worked.
The four of us did indeed fly up on Thursday and the trip was uneventful. We rented a car at the airport (a Chevy Cobalt, whatever that is) and drove to Clinton, NJ, a very pretty little town which was incorporated in 1865 but had been bustling for nearly 150 years before that. Saw the high school that Andi attended, Herb’s old elementary school, an historic mill, etc., etc., etc. We had lunch at a diner and dinner at a bowling alley, then hit the sack at a Hampton Inn after a very long day.
Friday (yesterday) was overcast but pleasant. We went to the funeral home at around 9:30 and received the few guests that appeared until around 11:00. Most of Grandma’s friends have already died, but Herb had a few old classmates who dropped in and one of Grandma’s old neighbors and her son showed up. A Methodist pastor gave a brief eulogy with passages from Ecclesiastes, Thesalonians, Psalms, Timothy and Romans. After his comments, Jenny put a bag of lavender in the casket – she’d gotten in for Grandma in Croatia a couple of weeks ago – and I added my elephant picture. She and I faded into the background while Herb and Andi said their goodbyes. The three of them then left for the car and I stuck around to help load the flowers – and Grandma – into the hearse.
The cemetery, just down the road from Grandma’s old house in Hampton, is beautiful. There was a very short graveside service (I don’t remember any of it at all) before she was buried next to her husband, Harold, who died in 1988. The man who actually dug the grave and buried her was a very old friend of Herb’s – they met as children, I believe. Jenny and I spent 30 minutes or so walking around the old section of the cemetery, looking at stones from the 18th and 19th centuries, before we went back to the funeral home. The three of them changed there. I opted to remain dressed as I was.
We had a good lunch at another diner and headed back to Philadelphia. During the trip, we learned that our flight home (scheduled to leave at 6:40) had been cancelled due to storms and we’d been moved to a 7:40 flight. Which became an 8:40 flight. Then 9:00. Then 10:00. Then 11:00. Then 10:00. Then 11:20. Then 10:40.
We began boarding at around 10:15. Herb, thankfully, had gotten 1st class tickets for all of us, so I was able to stretch out, suck down a vodka and coke, and relax a bit….a very good thing because we stayed on the ground for close to two more hours. I got home at 3:15 this morning and have never been so happy to see my own bed.
I’ll be taking it easy until next Friday – cleaning, paying bills, doing yardwork. On Friday, I will drive to (you guessed it) Philadelphia to attend a friend’s niece’s graduation party, and I’ll head up to Ontario for another week before going back to work on the 18th.