Today was my Grandpa's memorial service. It was wonderful. Everything went smoothly and just about everyone cried their eyes out. The turnout was amazing (400+ I'd say) and we heard stories from people that my Grandpa had touched. The stories were just great... people who had mowed his lawns, or helped him usher. These people said the same things that us grandkids did... that he was probably one of, if not THE, most influential person in their lives. He touched so many.

It was exceedingly painful for me, I won't lie. For whatever reason, his death seemed so much more real during that short service than it had in the previous week. His picture was up there on the screen and I couldn't even look at it. My heart just ached with sadness. Its still so... so... baffling that he is NOT here. I remember that we would talk sometimes (usually when my Grandparents would go on long trips) about the reality that one day Grammy and Grandpa would die. We would shudder at the thought and say, " I can't imagine". Well, I can imagine it now and its just as horrible as we thought it would be. At least Grammy is still with us, and we will enjoy her even more than before now because we know that sting of what is to lose such special people.

A week. A mere week. Weeks usually fly by in a minute for me, but this last week has been so unendingly long. The longest of my life. Time kind of lost its relevance, as my Aunt Daralyn said. And now what? We move on, we learn to live with our loss and heartache and yes, it will ease with time. But I wonder at how long this feeling of "Uh, this really didn't happen did it?" will go on.

If you peek over at the right side of this page, you'll see the slide show that I worked on and was shown today. I'm proud of it, and I'm thankful that I had my husbands technical genius last night so that others could see it :)