This is a shout-out to those who wrote to me when I was feeling very blue last week. Your kindness was exactly what I needed, thank you! It’s still a bit crazy on my end.

To make a long story short, my grandmother was 92 years old when she passed over, so it wasn’t shocking, but sad. I flew out to California last Friday for the funeral, but something went wrong. I’m back in Michigan now, the funeral hasn’t happened just yet, though I fly back out to California on this coming Sunday. My grandfather is a retired marine (he fought in World War 2, in the Pacific) and he wants for himself and my grandmother to be buried at the marine cemetery Riverside, CA (it’s a big honor to be buried there). You’d think this would be a simple request, but no. Everything comes down to waiting until a governmental office in Minneapolis that deals with arranging for marine burials gives the funeral home where my grandmother’s body is currently at the OK to bring her to Riverside. We had been told it was going to happen yesterday, on Sunday, so the whole family flew in from Colorado and Michigan and parts of California down to Santa Ana where my grandparents lived. What no one told us was that last Monday was Veteran’s Day, being a holiday, so that pushed everything back a week. We believe the screw-up occurred with the funeral home, since they were the ones who told us the date. Unfortunately they’re also the only service in all of LA that deals with Riverside directly, so it wasn’t like we could go use someone else. Anyway, what this means to me is I’ll be in Michigan until next week, when I’ll battle Thanksgiving holiday crowds to head out to California for 48 hours for the funeral (I hope it happens this time) The good side of all this is that we were able to have our service for my grandmother on time, since the whole family was together. That felt good.

Once again, getting your kindness last week was a delight and surprise. It was exactly what I needed =)