funny how things turn out sometimes. . .

I had this dinner at Applebee's last night that I was truly dreading. I'm part of the Aids Care team at church and whenever someone on the team has something happen to them, all the rest of us furnish a meal for them. After my Dad died, almost everyone sent a card and provided hugs for me. At the last meeting they decided that instead of providing a meal for me, they wanted to take me out for dinner. I didn't want to go. Somehow going out to dinner for the loss of someone's life, just seemed strange to me. I told them the cards and hugs were more than enough but they insisted I choose a restaurant. We met last night at 7 for dinner. Eight of us showed up, 3 couples, and Karen and myself. The whole night was unbelieveable! First they pushed 4 tables together to accomodate our large group, which would have been ok, but they put 4 of the chairs up against the back of the wall. Unless you leaned the chairs forward, there was no way to get in behind them. What a joke!! Then about 20 min. after everyone has ordered, our waiter and the manager come out to inform us that one of the fish dishes that 2 of the people have ordered, is no longer available. Out come the menus again so they can choose again. 20 min. later we all get served. When we finish our waiter is no where to be seen and we want to order dessert. We finally flag him down, and we enjoy our dessert. Another 30 min later he finally brings us our checks, but they're all wrong, so he takes everybody's slip back and says he'll be right back. We wait, and wait and wait, Finally he comes back over and he asked everyone what they had. We can see him over at the computer with his manager trying to figure out the slips, but again we wait, and wait, and wait. He then comes back over to the table and asked the men in our group to come back over with him to the computer so he can figure out the bills, Is he kidding?? The guys leave, and we're all laughing hysterically by now, how hard can it be to figure out the bills. . .come on now.
After it's all said and done the manager agrees not to charge us for the desserts, and he gives us 2 -$25 gift cerificates to use as door prizes for our Spaghetti Fundraiser that's coming up in 2 weeks.

But that's not the funniest thing that happened. As we were leaving, one of the couple's husband, Harold said, "Well, Cheryl, Happy Birthday!" I said, "We're not here to celebrate my birthday", but how could I tell him that we were there to celebrate my loss. The words just couldn't come out. One of the other women in the group said, "Harold, I don't think they have a song for why we're here with Cheryl tonight," At that, we all started laughing. Poor Harold was so embarassed but I laughed so hard, I cried. My Dad would have thought the whole situation that evening was funny, and so did I
It reminded me that life can be rough at times but God provides friends and laughter to carry through those hard times. What a God He is!! As we were all walking out to our cars one of the women grabbed me and said, "You know why we didn't want to just drop the food off at your house? We didn't want you to eat alone, and we wanted you to know that we're always here for you, no matter what". Is there anything more beautiful that she could have said, NOT!! Thanks God for the friends that you've provided. They mean a lot.

I started my blog titling it "life can be rough, well it can be. . .but there are things that I've learned along the way. . . I went home to Indiana for the funeral and it was great staying there for 11 days. At the visitation time, I saw cousins that I haven't seen in 20-25 yrs. It was hard to say goodbye to "my favorite person on earth", but God does have a sense of humor. Just before everybody was going to be coming in for the viewing, I was standing in front of my Dad's casket and I heard this chirping sound going off. I thought at first of how rude it was for someone to have their cell phone going off in a funeral parlor, but then I realized it was coming from my Dad's casket. My Dad wanted to be buried with his watch on, so Betty agreed to bury him with it on. My Dad had gotten this watch a couple of years earlier and the alarm on it was constantly going off at all the inopportune moments. My Dad couldn't always hear it because he was partially deaf in one ear, (it was the ear that faced the window on his truck that I'm sure was always down when he was driving all those years in the heat), and he never learned how to turn it off. It would go off when people were praying or when someone else was trying to talk to him, whenever it chose to. I had to run and get the funeral director and he was able to take the back of the watch off and take the batteries out. Several of the family were in the room when this happened, and at first no one did anything, but then all of a sudden we all started laughing. Dad would have been the first one to see this as being funny. It truly lightened the moment and we were all able to move on then and do what we had to do. Another funny moment was when we all got out to the gravesite. The funeral director told the pallbearers that they would have a little tricky time trying to get to the spot where my Dad's casket needed to be. They needed to back the casket out of the limo and then turn to the left, walk straight ahead to the end of the row and then turn to the right again but they would need to straddle the casket over the top of another tombstone that belong to someone else before they could put it down on the rack where it would rest during the service. It was funny trying to see them all trying to hold the casket steady, (by the way, it teetered a few times), and lift it up quite a bit to get it over the other person's tombstone. They did it, but Dad was rocked around a little bit before it was over.
I spent the rest of the week with Betty and we laughed and cried together quite a bit. It was hard for me looking at all the old pictures and then having to go through my Mom's stuff as well. . .let's just say, I'm glad it's over. Another funny thing was watching the DVD that was given to all three of us kids. It was sold at the last Strycker, (my Dad's mom,aka, my grandma Nusbaum's side of the family), reunion. It was created by Devon Strycker who was my Dad's cousin. Devon's Dad and my grandma Nusbaum were brother and sister. It's a small world, I went to church with Devon Strycker at First Baptist Church in Elkhart before Alan and I got married and moved to Michigan. I knew Devon and his wife, Fern, through Alan's parents. They were friends with them for years. Devon and Dad Morgan worked for Reese Products and it was Bob Reese who asked Devon and Dad Morgan to move to Elkhart and work at his plant there instead of the one in New York. I would never have meant Alan if they hadn't moved to Elkhart. In the DVD over half of it is showing my grandparents at their old farm house. They are having family get togethers and my parents are in the DVD, (I've never seen them that young before. They always looked so happy). The funniest part is the farmhouse was also a riding stable. My Dad's side of the family all love horses. I'm surprised we didn't have horses when we were growing up. I guess my Dad got to enjoy my Uncle Sonny's horses next door. Anyways, my grandma Nusbaum weighed about 300lbs., probably. She was a big woman and very tall. She gets up on this horse and the look on that poor horse's face says it all. She's so big, that horse looks more like a donkey than a horse. When she gets ready to dismount, my poor Dad has to help her down and she's in a dress, because all ladies wore dresses back then, no matter what. It's hysterical!! Everybody is laughing but my grandma Nusbaum was always happy and laughing. Like my Dad, she always made people laugh. I guess that's where he got his sense of humor, from his Mom.

I've been home now for a little over 4 weeks. My heart is still tender and I still have moments when I fall apart, but it's getting better. I talk to Betty about every other day and she's doing ok. I wish I could be there for her, but my life is here for now. Life can be rough, but God almost always throws a little humor in along the way. . .