A Fitting Send Off

Hard day for us at HQ today with my mother-in-law's funeral. In the end it was a great send off but inevitably it wasn't at all easy for any of us. The wee man is at that awkward age where he still isn't sitting still and wants to explore everything so a funeral isn't the best place for him to be. My mother was on hand to whisk him away in the church when he got too chatty or overexcited with proceedings.

It's very hard to have a toddler who doesn't understand what's going on. I was a pallbearer today and the wee man got very upset as we carried the coffin up the aisle. He obviously wanted to say hi to me as I passed him but being in the middle of carrying a coffin I couldn't stop and carry him. With time naturally he will learn about these situations and will be less likely to be clingy with us. But with today we didn't want to have to keep him occupied as well as deal with everything else. My sister was also kindly on duty to keep him occupied, this at least means we could focus on what was going on.

We will now stay here until the middle of the week and we'll head home and try to return to a sort of normality, this of course will take longer than we hope it will. For the wee man though life has to continue and nothing stops for him. This can make dealing with grief tricky as you HAVE to carry on and you can't sit still and think about things, especially with the wee man as he NEVER sits still. It will be easier in the future when it happens again as he'll be older, although I hope it doesn't happen again for a long long time.


jpr