After......

After it is all over I think is the hardest. While you are having to make decisions and get things done and ready, you are sad and you have moments of breakdowns, but the true sadness doesn't come until after you have taken the last person to the airport and everyone has gone home.

After taking my children and my aunt and uncles to the airport Sunday morning I drove by the cemetery on the way home and swung in and took a look. She would love all the flowers. We had to take a lot of them with us if they were plants or in baskets so we used them for the luncheon and then left them for Sunday services the next day! We have many at our house as well. But she loved flowers and I know it made her happy to have them all around her and us!

The part of the cemetery that she is buried in is called "The Garden of Gethsemane" and has a statue of the Savior praying in the background, which has always been my father's favorite picture or figurine of the Savior. So it is fitting. I found out later that not only did I drive by and look, so did Elizabeth and Ruth, and Dad, each of us without the other knowing that we had gone. I am so glad we buried her close by, it will be nice to go and see her often.

After the funeral services they have the family follow the casket out and then they tell us all to go and get in our cars and line up.....so that is what everyone did, but my Dad went back in and thanked all those who came.....and I feel horrible that I didn't know that was what he was doing....I would have gone back in too, because I have no idea who was there. Isn't that horrible not to know who was there? Thank heavens that people have made comments or posted on my facebook, so that I know who was there. I was just trying to get through the day and really to be done. I really wanted to be done. My dear friends who came, Thank you! Thank you! Please forgive that I didn't get to see you and thank you in person.

I loved that my children were here! That was probably the thing that kept me going....even after it was over, we still needed to be with our children and it kept Alan and I going. It wasn't until after my 3rd trip to the airport on Sunday that I laid down and slept! I needed to sleep so badly.

Now today I have to go about normal business and work and act as if everything is back to normal. It will never get back to normal.....it will just become a different normal. I miss my mother. I hope that I will live the rest of my life in a way that will make her proud so that I will get to see and be with her again!!!