A Good Farewell

My grandpa Tommy passed away last month, and it was my privilege to take part in his final send off. Let me say one thing: My family knows how to throw an awesome funeral. It fit him to a T, and he would have loved every second of it.

As you can tell from the photo, he was a total bad ass Marine. At his funeral service there was a full Marine Corps honor guard and a 21 gun salute. And these weren't your old, pretty wooden ceremony rifles either. Those Marines were carrying the same semi-automatic weapons you'd see on the streets of Baghdad because this is wartime, son. (Did you catch that grandpa? The beauty is in the details, isn't it?)

The other thing we did was tell stories. All 7 of his grandchildren stood up together and just told stories about our favorite memories of him. And we didn't just eulogize him. We were talking and laughing with each other and with the people out in the pews. What a wonderful thing to inspire at your own memorial service.

I hope with all my heart that when I die (after a very long and happy life with my husband and children, Inshallah), that people have so many stories about me that it takes 3 days to tell them. I hope that there's at least one story that's so crazy and so juicy that my grandchildren fight over who gets to be the one to tell it. So I'm going to remind myself to take my kids on adventures, and tell them jokes, and teach them the real value of being ridiculous as well as forthright and upstanding. There's room for everything.

And I really hope, when my time is up, that they remember to put up that photo of me looking all hot and sassy in my bikini on the beach in Portugal.

Grandpa giving me a bottle.

Grandpa meets Caden for the first time.