Up until the time I got married at age 36 I had not been to a funeral.  None of my close family members had died up until this point.  Well, no one I was close to.  Sure there was Uncle Harry and Philip but I was not close to them.

My first funeral was my husbands Opa.  He was cremated and we buried him up north per his wishes.  That was the first funeral I attended. It was graveside so there was no body.

My second funeral I had attended was a close family friend’s mother who died.  I went to her funeral at what was once a local church to me but I had since moved away.  I was familiar with the church because I went there many times with the family.  This was my first funeral with a casket (Open).  It was strange to see someone who I was close to laying there.  I cried.  I participated in the procession and the graveside service.

My third funeral was a family member who I barely knew on my husbands side.  She was my in-laws age and had died of cancer. She had an open casket funeral. I overhead her daughter stating that she didn’t look like herself.  It was a lovely service.

More recently, my grandfather, a veteran of WW2 died in November 2015 leaving my grandmother on her own.  I helped with the pre-planned arrangements because my grandmother was suffering from dementia and needed the help. Needless to say I was sad when he died and I was sad at how my grandmother reacted to his death. Mostly denial but obviously caring when she saw the body at the funeral home.  She said as she touched him “Oh he’s cold!” and tried to put the covering up over him.  He was cremated and was stored in a locked area of the funeral home until such time as my grandmother died.

My grandmother died recently and it fell to me to execute her prearranged burial plan. There was to be no service per her wishes.  She was cremated and  both of them were out to rest in a burial niche at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, Florida.

Because we have a weird family dynamic and my uncle is named “personal representative” or “executor” of my grandmothers will and the fact that my uncle doesn’t want to do it because he is “too far away”  It falls to me and/ or my father to be the executor of the estate.  My uncle would like it to be both of us but I think it should just be me for reasons which shall not be named.

This blog series will chronicle the story of our journey in probating my grandmothers estate.