oh happy day..

neither of us were looking forward to Saturday... services for the departed are always difficult, particularly when for family members... it's a long drive to NJ at the best of times, made longer by the rainy night driving conditions, and the fact that we had forgotten a few key items and had to go back for them... which put us at our destination at 4 in the morning.

my father-in-law paced about the house nervously in the morning... getting together photographs, practicing the speech he had written to honour his deceased wife... my husband put the finishing touches on the slide show he had created with all the photos i had scanned earlier in the week, and called his sister several times to see if there was anything further we could bring.

his sister was frantically rushing about her house when we got there, trying to get the last details taken care of...

then the baby woke up and needed to be fed and changed, people arrived, the house was full of a chaos of old family friends laughing and hugging and crying... the computer was hooked up to the tv and the slide show began...

and suddenly it was a party.

my mother-in-law would have loved that.

no sad speeches, no damp hankies, no "if only we'd had more time..."
just a celebration of her life, her friendships, her children... a celebration of the time we all had with her.

it was a wonderful day. too bad we wasted so much energy dreading its coming.