As if

My mother keeps apologizing to me for Grandma's death screwing up my vacation. As if. I'm really believing that she waited for both me - and my sister - to be taking a few days off to pass on. We were the only grandkids to visit her in the last few years, and all her kids are retired, so she was being careful with our busy schedules.

This is sort of a selfish or egomaniacal way to look at it, but if her death had occurred during the first week of school in a month, then I would have had to drop everything and attend - find a flight home, charge it (since I'm budgeted just until September 15, when I get my first paycheck), take a few days off, probably have to use up sick time and have it documented, fall behind in my classes and planning, and have to find a place for the dog. I would have gladly done all this, but Grandma made sure I didn't have to. She died on one of my two trips to Michigan this year, and waited for me to see her - on her last "good" day, on Saturday - to pass. She was looking out for me, even in death.

My parents are both on the other side of the state, dealing with funeral matters, and today I spent entirely alone in my family's house in the country. I had no vehicle or way to get around, so I read and drank diet pop from the seemingly limitless supply my parents have. I also watched some baseball, and just watched the Tigers slap around the Minnesota Twins for the second game in a row. These two games are two of the rare times I can watch the Tigers play on actual TV, and not on a computer screen, and I reveled in it - sitting in dad's lazyboy, turning it up, cheering. Both games were really, really good, too - well-played games by both teams, down to the wire. The Tigers are indeed the best team in baseball, not that you'd know it from the coverage on ESPN (which I've also been able to watch this trip home).

Tomorrow morning, my sister and I begin the trek to the visitation and funeral. I've got to get a couple of dress shirts on the way. It's going to be a long couple of days - family visitation, general visitation, and a rosary reading on Sunday, and then the in-state ceremony, the Catholic funeral mass, and the burial on Monday, followed by lunch. It just wouldn't be Grandma's if there wasn't food.