This picture is just about a month old, and before anyone gets offended let me share that this is my grandparents’ grave, and this is just one of my very regular trips there to fulfill a promise to my grandfather to go there (with my kids) and have fun.  And quite honestly, this is pretty tame.  All three kids have gone there often, and all three can tell you of the fun they have there.

Oddly enough, I have been going there for years, even many before either of them died, as my grandfather would take me there.  No, he was not morbid……he was loving.  And he took me there while he was alive to prepare me for the years I would be there and he and my grandma would not be. He used to say, “Someday you will be here without me, and it will be alright.”  He wanted it to be a place that I could come and remember, not sadness or pain, but the good things.  He wanted it to be a happy place where I could come or me with my family and we could laugh and play and I could share many of the good things and times we had together and their hopes for us all.  And it has worked.  I have been their sad on only two occasions, the days that each of them were buried there.  But even then, I came to my senses (on my grandpa’s burial date abruptly as I snuck there alone after the funeral). I was there and they weren’t.  And I realized that all of those times he took me out there were to prepare me for those two days.  It was an awesome gift.

But more than that, it is a constant gift to me as the cemetery is not a place for me to mourn, but one that I go to remember joy.  My grandpa wanted my kids to play there, and they always have and they still do…..ALL of them.  And in the midst of some of my deepest struggles in my life I have found myself there (sure I pray too and do the whole Church-thing as I am a priest and it’s sort of “required”).  It is a place that centers me and reminds me of what the important things in my life are.

No, it’s not a shrine, nor does it hold any mystical powers, nor are they there as they are at home in heaven.  Only their bodies remain.  But to me it is a place of tremendous joy.  Oh how I miss them! But for the Lion’s Share of my life I was so incredibly blessed. And I thank God for the opportunities I have for the rest of my life to make good on my promise and to hopefully pass on to our children a bit of that blessing for them to enjoy as well.

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+