Requiem

We are back from our trip to El Paso. As funerals go, it was nice. It was really great to see our oldest son (we haven’t seen him since Thanksgiving) and the Pumpkin had a great time with his brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents . There are two good things about El Paso: Boots and Burritos. I ate an unbelievable quantity of really good Mexican food and bought the Pumpkin a pair of Justin cowboy boots and a “real” cowboy hat.

We spent too much time in the lobby of the Embassy Suites watching the SEVEN kids under eleven run like wild things. They swam, got kicked out of the fitness center, played “elevator tag” and were generally unsupervised and out of control. We forbade the cousins to take the Pumpkin on the elevator (because looking up to the open 8th floor corridor and seeing his head peeking out of the railings was too terrifying for words) but other than that he ran with the worst of them.

The Pumpkin and his oldest brother R

running amok in the Lobby of the hotel

The Pumpkin escaped from my clutches TWICE during the service and ran across the front of the chapel yelling “and beyond” (as in “To Infinity and…). The minister, who was wonderful, bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the guys in Flight of the Conchords (the one on the right)and so I was seized by an absurd impulse to hold up my lighter when he sang “Praise God” over and over to the tune of Amazing Grace because he only knew the words to the first verse. It is one of my least attractive traits – I tend to giggle uncontrollably at funerals. If my youngest brother is with me I virtually have to get down on the floor to smother the gales of laughter that inevitably overcome my good sense. I did NOT actually laugh at the service this time but I thought silly thoughts and wished we weren’t all too sad to tell the funny stories she wanted us to tell.

I went back to work today but was feeling weepy and out of sorts. Between Mrs. Chicky’s loss of her Gram, LawyerMama’s loss of her Grandma-in-law, my own loss of my MIL, and Robin Roberts’ breast cancer I’ve been fighting tears all day. I am hoping that after I slog through tomorrow the weekend will cure me of my blues. I’m planning to work on some quilts this weekend – there is no better way to pay homage to my MIL. Maybe LawyerMama will come back and we can go to the beach and baste the kids.