aftermath

Oh holy bananas. Christmas/New Years usually seems chaotic. Non normal schedules, always filled with busy events. Then to add a freaking funeral in there?! AND a crazy, bad snow storm?! I honestly didn’t know what day it was, where I was going, what I was doing. Every day ran into one. I barely slept. If I did it wasn’t quality sleep.

Friday December 27: I worked only 4 hours. I told my boss about my grandpa’s health. Mentally, I couldn’t handle being at work. So I left at 10 AM. Boss wanted me to see grandpa. But with the snow storm (dropping at least 12 inches of snow, 18 inches most), I didn’t get anywhere.

Since the snow storm was long and drawn out, the Monday after, I started work at 9 AM (I’ve gone into work at 6 AM, didn’t get any extra sleep). The next day went into work at 7. Snow caused work to start late.

January 1, 2020: My cousin picked me up around 11:30 AM. We got to Hoven, SD around 4:30 pm. About half the family was already at the lodge. Hung out there for a few hours. Then we went to the funeral home. There were some small, last minute things the funeral home director wanted to discuss. The main purpose was the ‘first look’ at grandpa. Funeral home wanted the super close family to get the first look before the wake, to try to take some of the edge off of seeing grandpa dead.

January 2: The family met at 4 pm for the wake for some early stuff. The wake officially started at 5 pm.  Earlier in the day the rest of the family traveled into town. There were quite a few extended family at the wake, people I haven’t seen in awhile. The wake was long….it was a Catholic funeral.

January 3, 2020: The funeral was at 10 AM. There were SO many people at the funeral. An easy 200 people. Since my grandpa was in the Army, there was a little military thing…..like guns being shot off and a bugle played. By the time I sat down to eat the time was noon or a little after.

That morning was so windy, snowy, very cold. The roads from the cabin into the church were awful, could barely see the road. After the funeral and food, we all went back to the cabin.  A few of my cousins cars got stuck on snow drifts on the roads. So took a lot of us to get the cars out….temp was 25 degrees Fahrenheit at best, without the windchill.

January 6: I went back to work, the start of a normal work schedule. By 1 pm I wanted to fall asleep at work. I was so tired from the busy life, the lack of sleep caught up to me. I fell asleep by 7 pm.

This week at work went fast. I’m glad to get back into my normal routine. But the last couple weeks have been draining and very hard on me. I’ve been emotional. Coworkers gave me a couple cards. They put small messages on the card. I bawled all day that day. I know it’ll take time to get over the death of my grandpa. He was an amazing person. This is the hardest death I’ve had to deal with. Probably the hardest death of a grandparent.

I’ve lived for 33 years with all 4 of my grandparents. This grandpa meant the most to me of all my grandparents.