My Grandpa's Funeral. [View all]

[MynameisBlarney]

Just got back from NC a few minutes ago. It's a LOOOOONG damn drive from Hendersonville, NC. to Key Largo, Fl. 13+ hours.

I'm too wound up to go to sleep right now, so I thought I'd share with you folks a bit, if you don't mind.

My grandma died 2 years ago after a long slog dealing with dementia and several other serious physical ailments. My grandpa was relatively healthy, other than being nearly completely deaf and blind. He has been ready to join her since the day she died, but his body was too healthy until relatively recently. He stopped taking meds (other than painkillers) and had refused all treatments about 2-3 months ago.

His body finally let him join her April 29th, 2013 at 2:00 pm. He was 93.

At the service, there was a preacher, who also there for my grandma's funeral. He's known as the Pope of Henderson County. Reverend McKennish, I believe his name was.
He's known my family since the 30's, if not before. He had a million hilarious stories about so many of family members...bootleggers and preachers he says, and he was friends to them all.
Such a cool guy. Even though I'm an atheist, his words damn sure helped me and everyone else at the service. I hope to see him again, just not a funeral, I'd love to talk with that wonderful man for hours and hours.

During the middle of the service, they ushered his closest kin into a side room for a private prayer with the preacher and one of my cousins, Ronald, who is a deacon at the Balfour Baptist Church. when we walked back into the main room with everyone else and sat back down, there was a flag on the coffin. I knew he'd been in the Army Air Corps, so I didn't think much of it. But then I heard a note from what sounded like a trumpet. I thought it was the music from the CD my sister made to play during the service...again, I didn'y think much of it.

The I heard measured footsteps walking down the aisle, they belonged to an Airmen, two Airmen, and as they stood on each end of the coffin, Taps began to play. That note I'd heard before was the bugler. As it played, they folded up the flag, like you see in movies. They walked up to my first cousin, Art. They presented the flag to him on behalf of the President of the United States in honor of his service to our country.

We had all already cried several times before this...but that got everyone damn near sobbing.

I found out later at the wake, that my Grandpa had worked on a top secret project, developing Radar, and that he also helped receive like 200k wounded coming in from the Battle of the Bulge. There was more things he did that they told me, but those were the two that stuck in my head.
He never told anyone until my aunt, (who had done an essay for a local NPR show about my Grandpa a few years ago. She also wrote the song "Welcome Home Soldier" that is played at the Vietnam Memorial, but that's another story) had asked him what exactly he did in WWII. And he still didn't want to tell her. But she had found out that after 50 years, it had been declassified, and once she convinced him. He told her everything.

I had no idea my Grandfather was a war hero.


Holy shit.




*edit* sorry about the shitty speeling and grammer