A Great Person to Have Fun With

As many of you know, my grandmother, my Nana, passed away a few days before Thanksgiving. She was an amazing woman who had a profound impact on my life and helped to shape the person that I am. She battled multiple myloma for 14+ years and I am devastated over her loss.
So my husband and I scrambled to come up with the money to travel from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Houston, Texas to be at her funeral. We borrowed money from family and got an advance on his paycheck and we made it there. Of course we took our three children with us, which is no small feat. We traveled over 1400 miles, stopping only to stretch, eat, and use the bathroom. My husband and I traded off on driving and sleeping (with the help of A LOT of coffee!) and the children played video games, slept, and fought with each other. When we got there, there was a lot of hugging family members (many of whom my children did not know) and crying. It was overwhelming for all of us, but the children did what children do best: they coped. They found cousins to play with and even played in front of the casket (that sounds horrible, but she would have loved seeing their joy, so we just made sure they didn't get close enough to knock anything over)! The day of the funeral arrived and I felt sick. I didn't want to go because I didn't want to face the fact that she was really gone. So we got ready and headed to the funeral home one last time. We sat there while people got up and spoke about my Nana, saying wonderful things and sharing memories. From the start, Ben wanted to get up there and share a story, but I said absolutely not. Why? Because he is like his father and I feared that he would get up there and go off on a tangent about his favorite obsession; sharks. Also, if I'm being completely honest, I didn't want to let go of him because I was holding my composure because of my children and I was afraid that if he got up there, I would lose it. I'm selfish, I know. Finally my husband said he was taking Ben up there anyway. They walked up there together and my husband adjusted the microphone for Ben. Ben stood up tall and straight and spoke with amazing enunciation and projection. He said, "I want to share a memory of Nana. I remember this one time Nana and Papa took us to the zoo. She took us to see the elephants, and she took us to see the giraffes, and then she took us to the aquarium. In the aquarium, we got to see a nurse shark." At this point he held up his stuffed shark. "As you can see, I'm kind of a shark fanatic!" He pointed to the shark and several people chuckled. "This is my black tip reef shark, Jaws." At this point I thought, "Great, here goes the tangent!" But he lowered his shark and continued. "Nana stayed in there for a long time and let me look at the shark because she knew how much I loved them. She was a great person to have fun with, and it really.... stinks that she's gone." Ben then walked back to me and gave me a big hug (and I cried like a baby!). Later Ben was speaking to one of my cousins and she told him what a great job he had done speaking about Nana. He told her "I wanted to say 'it really sucks that she's gone,' but I thought that would be kind of inappropriate." My son said it better than anyone else. She was a great person to have fun with. And it does suck that she's gone. And I was wrong for trying to stop him from expressing his feelings. My son is amazing and awesome, and sometimes he surprises me in the most wonderful ways.

*For those who are wondering, Kevin did pretty well with everything, but that is for another blog.