So last Thursday we flew to Texas to my paw paws funeral. I knew that this was going to to be a hard trip, but I knew it was one that had to happen. A year ago my paw paw told Mike and I that we could have his house and farm if we wanted it. This was a house I grew up at and SOOO many of the great memories I have from my childhood stems from that house. We have talked about it and thought about it, and have never made a concrete decision. It is a smaller town than the one we live in, the people there are very country (not a bad thing, but might not be a good thing either), small churches, FARMING! Farming sounds AMAZING, but it is such hard work. It is humid and there are bugs everywhere. Owen got his first fire ant bites, and we are still scratching mosquito bites. Plus my dad was holding Scarlett and a 4 foot snake slithered by. Oddly, these are all things I can get used to. A life on a farm would be a great experience for our kids. We could homeschool, they would grow up around the hardest working people in the world, good, wholesome people. They would grow up being respectful humans. I just don't know if it is the life for us. It would be a COMPLETELY different lifestyle!
When we got to his house, it was so overgrown with vegetation, it scared me! It was not what I had remembered from a few years ago. His house was empty, his gardens were not recognizable, it needed more work than I think we could do. SAD! We went into the house, and I broke down. My dad and I cried. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. We decided to come back after the funeral the next day so I could get what I wanted out of the house.
The day of the funeral was hotter than hell. It was the kind of heat and humidity that made your clothes cling to your sticky skin. The service was amazing. There was a 16 minute sideshow of his life. I cried through the whole thing. One of my paw paws old friends got up and told stories about him, and we all laughed and cried. At the end of his talk he said two things that I will remember forever. He looked at all of my family and said, "James would have wanted nothing more than to see you all walk with God, and if you are not, please turn your lives around." I felt like it was my paw paw talking to us. The second thing he said was that there was a saying that he always remembered my paw paw saying, and it was one of the best sayings ever. He said,"It's a mighty fine world we live in, and it's really hard to beat, you get a thorn with every rose, but aint the roses sweet." I sat there thinking that I remember him saying this a lot. The last part of the service a man from the VFW stood up and presented a flag to my uncle, and saluted my paw paw's box of ashes. It was an amazing end. It made me sob uncontrollably, but I think I needed to.
After the service we went back to his house and I walked around his property and took tons of pictures. I went inside and took more pictures, and gathered some stuff that I wanted. There was a box in one of the rooms, with a bunch of stuff I had sent him in the nursing home. I was looking through it and found a copy of the letter he had written me when I was born. I read it, even though I know it word for word. He ended his letter with, "it's a mighty fine world we live in, and it's really hard to beat, you get a thorn with every rose, but aint the roses sweet." He had said it to me a million times, because that is how many times I had read that letter!
We took his ashes and my maw maws ashes and mixed them together. We took them out to the garden and buried half of them in the garden. It was the only time no one cried. It is what they would have wanted and I think it made us all happy that we could do that for them. It was a wonderful and sad day, all at the same time. I feel like I got incredible closure from going. What great people my maw maw and paw paw were. They will be missed.
