Funeral day--bittersweet

It's kind of weird how funerals make you feel. Of course, there's the overwhelming feeling of sadness and loss. It's not so bad for me since I wasn't super close to Nana Bea. I've only met her a few times and those memories are very happy, but I also don't have that much of a history with her. My main goal was to be strong for Chris and his parents.

One of the beautiful things about the funeral is that we celebrated Nana Bea's life and all that made her special. She has six children and they're all crazy, but in a good way :) I jokingly said that I knowingly married into that family, so I had to be prepared for just how crazy they are!

Another good thing is that so many family members are gathered here to remember her.

Now it's 10:42pm and we're finally back at the hotel. After the luncheon, we had a few hours back at the hotel. Chris took a nap, and I guess his parents napped, too, but I was wide awake. I wasted some time online and did some reading. At about 6 we went back to Chris' aunt and uncle's house for some more family time. They fed us spaghetti and then we went through Nana Bea's jewelry. I was kind of surprised when they invited me to go through her stuff because I'm not really family, but they insisted that I should take some stuff. So I ended up with a couple rings, a couple necklaces, and lots of gaudy beaded necklaces that I'm going to take apart so that I can make new necklaces. I thought it was really sweet of them to include me in such a family ritual.

After our goodbyes we got back to the hotel, and Guy and Colleen wanted to get a bite to eat at the diner. We sat with them and Chris and I shared a milkshake, then we came upstairs to get ready to get to bed. It's going to be a LOOOONG day tomorrow with an 8 hour drive. We're trying to make sure we can avoid rush hour traffic in Boston since we'll be taking the Mass Turnpike.

Funny thing is that with a fairly restless night last night, I've been completely wound up all day, and even though it's coming up on 11pm, I'm still not interested in going to sleep.