One of those old family stories-did that really happen?
Do you ever have those family get togethers where the family sits around and talks and laughs about things that have happened in the past? Well I have a story for you!
This story actually happened about 11 or 12 years ago, believe it or not.
My father came from a family of eight children that were raised during the depression, one of his brothers who lived in El Paso, Texas passed away, and we were planning the final trip to El Paso for his funeral.
I had a 2 door Ford Explorer, my father was 6′4″ tall and my mother is 4′11″ tall and I was the one driving. Now when you have a two door explorer, it can be a challenge for anybody to get into the back seat. My mother was so short that she needed a helping hand up and then had to crawl on her knees in the back and my fathers legs were so long that they would get tangled in the seat belt straps everytime he got in or out of the car. My father had Alzhimers Disease and was in the middle stage of it, the stages where you were confused or disoriented most of the time but there were moments of clarity when you knew everything that was going on. He did know that we were going to his brothers funeral in El Paso and it would be a very long ride.
Now if you have ever been to El Paso, Texas, it is in the middle of no where and either very hot and dry or cold and wet. Everything started out normal. When we arrived in El Paso, Texas we checked into the hotel and contacted other members of the family and let them know that we were there. They explained where the church was and where my uncle was so we could go and visit. Bless my dads heart he was excited to see his other brothers and sisters but very hard to handle and at times very disoriented.
That night my mother, father, younger brother and myself stayed in the same hotel room. My father ws very confused, he forgot where we were and started pounding on the walls. My mother was a nervous wreck and my brother and I looked at each other and we both wanted to run away. After everything settled down, it was either laugh or cry and it was much better to laugh.
We went to the church the next day and had a beautiful service, that is if any funeral can be beautiful. Now is when it gets wierd. After the funeral and you all line up to go to the cemetery in your procession line, we had about 25 vehicles in this line. But we kept driving and driving until we were almost 30 miles outside of town. My dad was very anxious, a person with Alhizmers does not stay confined inside of a car very well, it reminded me of the commercials are we there yet.
When we finally arrived at the cemetery to our surprise the grave had not been dug yet! There was some confusion about the equipment being there to do the work and the time that it had to be done. At any rate, we were all asked to leave and go back to out prospective places that we were staying and wait for a phone call. The funeral director was to call us when it was time to come back for the funeral.
Well just before dusk the funeral director called and said that everything was done and it was time to go back. After I managed to get my parents back into my vehicle we made the long drive back out to the cemetery. The bobcat was there to dig the hole but it had still not been dug. Now this cemetery was 30 miles outside of town and there were no street lamps around for light. It was an old fashioned cemetery. The moon was the brightest that I had ever seen it.
It was now getting dark, we were asked to move our cars where our headlights would shine on the bobcat and we could get this hole dug and have this over. We had car battery’s going dead. It was finally dug and the preacher was talking, remember the car lights are still on us. He finishes talking and goes to hand the folded United States Flag to my aunt, (as my uncle had been in the Navy) and drops the flag and it falls beneath the casket into the hole. The guy that was working the backhoe, crawled down into the hole and picked up the flag, handed it to the funeral director and tried to give it to my horrified aunt.
Of course the flag was desecrated and he was trying to give it to my aunt. My aunt of course refused to take the flag and said that it needed to be sent back to Washington DC and burned and replaced with another one. It is now pitch dark and there are wolves howling in the background. My father falls into a sticker patch getting out of my vehicle after having his legs getting tangled in the seat belt straps, my mother goes to help him and falls on top of him in the sticker patch. I took pictures of the whole thing, but the film was double exposed and the pictures that printed looked like ghost people standing in a cemetery at night.
Now even though this is a solem occasion, you have to laugh. I would never have thought that I would be involved in something like this in a hundred years. This is a story that will be in the family for a long, long time.
Jan Giza