Missing Dad

This is the first Memorial Day without Dad.  Another "first."  This evening we met at the cemetery but I started crying about the time we got in the car.  The whole family was there, Mom, all five children and spouses, and all the grandchildren.  It was good to be together, but so sad.  I don't want him to be gone, but he is.  I know he is happy and busy and well, but I wish he was happy and busy and well with us.  Christopher and Tysen brought balloons and we each wrote a message to Dad and then let them go simultaneously.  It was a sweet sight to see all the little people holding their balloons and watching them float up to Heaven.

Today was the first time we'd seen Dad's headstone.  It was finished and placed about a month ago, but we haven't been up to see it.  Somehow seeing his name carved in stone with his birth and death date makes it seem so permanent.  Grandma and Grandpa Hare and my cousin, Jeff Dalzen, are buried by Dad, and as I stood at the cemetery thinking of these people I love and that are gone, I was so grateful, again, for the strength of my testimony of the resurrection.  I know I will see them again.

On a lighter note, there was an excavator and a pickup truck just off the hill below Dad's grave and the kids had a great time playing on it.  They all really like each other and love to be together, and they ran around and around.  If Dad was allowed to be with us this evening, I'm sure he was so happy to see them happy together.  It makes me sad that my kids won't really know him.  This paragraph certainly didn't end on a light note.

We all gathered at Mom's house afterwards for dinner, in her words, "to drown our sorrows in food."  It was delicious.  The children always have a hard time eating when we are with cousins--everything is far more interesting than sitting to eat.

I am standing in a weird way, with arms akimbo.  

I'm trying unsuccessfully not to cry.

The view from the cemetery.  

Dad's headstone is at my feet.  

What boy can resist an excavator?

Not mine.

Or Eugene's.

Or Christopher's.

 

I wish my eyes were open.

I was trying not to cry.

  

  

Dad is on the left, Grandma and Grandpa Hare in the middle, Jeff on the right.

This is a beautiful, peaceful spot of ground.

I thought I had taken a great picture of Donovan crawling in the grass.

He was looking right at me with a cute smile on his face.

Turned out my batteries died.

Dang it.