Smart Mouth

Yesterday was a long day.  We left at 6am, and despite feeling queasy (from my treatment on Monday) and sad about what we were going to Milwaukee to do… Cara and I still managed to have a good time together.  We spent a lot of time remembering all of the funny things that my G-ma had said and done over the years.  It was a lot of fun to reminisce.

We were just about to the cemetery when we had a near death experience.  We were on a three lane highway that was under construction, all of a sudden there was a car coming into our lane.  Like GONNA HIT US coming into our lane.  I said something to Cara, like UUUGGHHH or LOOK OUT or EEEEP, I can’t remember what, and Cara swerved to the left onto the shoulder.  We were lucky that we were in a part of the construction zone where there was a wide shoulder, because most of it was a narrow shoulder.  Anyway… she swerved left, and then swerved right to correct and I felt like we were going to crash or roll or explode… it definitely was a Dukes of Hazard moment.  We got back into the far left hand lane BEHIND the woman that tried to murder us, who was NOT budging from the left hand lane.  So, we passed her on the right and I was giving her my best stink eye when………

wait for it…………

SHE FLIPPED ME OFF!

WHAT?!?  Lady, you tried to hit US! 

GAH! 

I promptly returned her bird with one of my own whilst shouting F*CK YOU!!! 

I don’t know why I shouted that, not like she could hear me.

People, the murderess had to have been about eighty.

Imagine this:

…. flipping me off.

She held her birdie aloft for a long time too.  Long enough for me to notice how crooked and wrinkly and knobby looking her finger was.

Poor Cara’s heart beat a million times a minute for a good 30 minutes after that.  All day long I kept saying, I can’t believe she flipped me off.

Old ladies in cars now cause me anxiety.

After nearly meeting Jesus, we met my parents at the cemetery and waited for my sister Kristen and her husband to arrive.  Once they did, we drove to the graveside.

We laid flowers and a box of Kleenex (she loved Kleenex so much she nearly used a box a day) at the headstone. 

Then we each talked about memories of her… we ended up laughing quite a bit.  My sister Kristen brought along a letter that G-ma had wrote her which she read aloud to us.  It made me miss her very much.  I wish I had kept every letter that she wrote to me.  Then we closed with my sister saying a prayer.

Afterwards we went to eat at one of my G-ma’s favorite restaurant, a greek place called Mykono’s.  That place had more on the menu than I had ever seen.  We ate, said good bye and then Cara and I traveled the 5 1/2 hours back to Minnesota.

It was a long day, but I am so glad that I went.  I feel like I really said good bye now.  Even though it was hard and it was sad, and my Mom didn’t even want us to come for awhile… in the end, she was grateful we came and I am too.  It felt good to come together as a family and pay our respects to a complicated woman that we all loved very, very much,