Not All Glitter and Gold

Everything at Christmas is always glitter and gold. This is not the image I'd choose to display the loveliness of this season, but today was not the usual Christmas season kind of day.

Today reminded me of the Christmas season that my dad died. Today my friend, Cyndi, and her family were all saying goodbye to their dad, granddad, and great-granddad. So some of Cyndi's friends decided they would be there just to be supportive and to let her know that we care.

Because I am not family and don't know many of the family members, I stood in the back with the Cyndi's other friends. While standing there, I looked to the side and saw this little girl playing "hop-scotch" on the grave stones as she walked along with her mom. I silently pulled my camera from my pocket and clicked, not having a clue whether I had captured anything. Before the brief service began, I had watched all the adults carefully trying to not step on the grave markers, watching this little girly, made me smile. She didn't have a clue what she was hop-scotching on.

Maybe one of the reasons I went today was because I remember vividly my dad's graveside funeral. His was the very last burial in 1991 at the Veteran's National Cemetery in Riverside. He had died just a coupled days before Christmas. There were 4 of us at his funeral: me, Mr. Fun, and our two kids; oh yeah, and the military color guard.

It was maybe one of the saddest moments of my life. My dad had been a name dropper all his life. I thought zillions of his friends would be there. It was really a crazy, weird, sad moment. I think I was glad that none of my friends came to support me because I would have been embarrassed that my dad had no one from his world show-up for his funeral. Maybe his friends didn't come because it was several hundred miles from where he lived or maybe none of them knew he had died. I don't know. But . . .

. . . But several of us wanted Cyndi to know that we cared about her loss. So this is not all glitter and gold, but being there today felt right. It felt like what a friend should do for a friend. Just quietly attend and in some way say, "I care." In spite of the circumstances, it was a good moment. It would have been better if it had not been raining, but maybe that just added to the backdrop atmosphere of the whole scene.

My goal is to be back here tomorrow with something Christmasy.
Good night from rainy Southern California,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol