Some like it hot, some like it cold.

Not sure what the title of this post is all about, but whatever.

So, the services and stuff went alright for Uncle Ronnie. I drove up to Cleveland on Friday morning. I had thought the stuff started on Thursday, but I was wrong. Anyway, the showing was from two til eight, but family goes first so we got to the funeral home around one fifteen. I couldn't even look at Uncle Ronnie in the casket becaue it looked nothing like him. He had always been a big guy, not huge, but you know, 270 lbs, 6'3", just big. By the time he died he only weighed a little over 100 lbs. It was awful. He looked good, considering the cancer had literally beat him to death, but still. We stayed at the funeral home from one fifteen until about nine. It was a really long day, and I saw a lot of people I haven't seen in almost twenty years, like some of my dad's/uncles' cousins, and my Aunt Sue's family. A lot of the people there had never even met my little brother in person, only seen pictures. I really think that 90% of the family there had seen me last when I was about five... that would be 18 years ago. It was a blah day, obviously, and the phrases I kept hearing the most were:

"Fifty-five, too young..."
"He was a good friend, we lost someone great..."
"Wow! I can't believe how big you are!" (that was to me and Scotty)
"My, how time flies..."

It got semi-irritating after awhile, but I put on a good face and I didn't cry all day long. After that we went to Applebee's and ate some light dinner. It was pretty cool, me and mom and dad and Scotty just chilling. It's so much better to be the four of us than if we take Gramma P. because all she does is bitch about everything. But I digress. When we got back to the hotel, I called SL and we talked for awhile before I finally had to go to sleep around midnight. Wake up time for Saturday morning was seven fifteen and I needed my sleep.

Saturday was a whole other kind of emotional situation. We got to the funeral home around nine fifteen so that everyone who was going to be in the funeral procession could be there for the quick prayer and then line up to drive to the church (which, incidentally, was across the street and down one block.) I cried at the funeral home because I was sad, but mostly because it was the very last time I will ever see Uncle Ronnie again and he just didn't look like himself. When my Gramma K. died, she looked like herself, and it was okay. I cried and I was sad, but she had been sick for over fifteen years, paralyzed and everything, so it was expected, not to mention that she was almost ninety years old. It was much easier to deal with. But Uncle Ronnie, at fifty-five, was too young like everyone said, he went so quickly, and he didn't even look like the Uncle Ronnie I picture in my head when I think about him. That was really hard to deal with, it was almost like closing the casket on a complete stranger that everyone claimed was Uncle Ronnie. SK and I got to ride in the limo to the church, and when we got there I had to walk with Aunt Sue and her nephew (on her side, not our side) right in the front directly behind the casket. I had my dad's handkerchief tucked into my skirt. I helped them unfold the pall and place it over the casket after the priest blessed it with holy water, and then we sat down in the pew and mass started. Mass was alright, about as exciting as a Catholic Funeral mass can be. Uncle Bob and Sr. Patricia read the readings, and my Aunt Sue's niece Kristin read the litany (I think that's what its called.) Aunt Sue's sisters and their husbands took up the gifts. I cried the whole time, especially when the Fr. Steve gave his sermon and talked about all the great things Uncle Ronnie did for the church and for the health center where he worked and everything else. I wish I could have known about all this stuff when he was living. I looked around the church at one point and there were about 150 people there. I couldn't believe it. Uncle Ronnie really was a popular and loved guy. We left the church and rode to the cemetary then. He's buried at Holy Cross, which was a little odd to me because the rest of my family (my dad's side) is buried at Calvary. I guess they picked out this spot like two years ago though, and a few of my dad's and my mom's family members are buried there, but not all. There are two plots left at Calvary in the K. family burial lot, and I already claimed one of them. Just so you all know.
Not all the people from the church came to the cemetary, but a lot of folks did. The priest said a nice prayer and Sr. Patricia read a nice thing, and then we placed flowers on top of the casket. SK was the first one to put a rose on. Seeing him all day long, being a pall bearer at age sixteen and just acting like a man was strange to me and it made me cry that much more. Damn. After the cemetary it was back to the funeral home for lunch, and it was pretty good. Talked to some more people, but no one I hadn't already talked to either Friday or earlier that day. I was very frustrated because I hadn't smoked but two cigarettes all day. My Gramma P. was being very difficult, more so than usual. She has ZERO tact and anymore she has the innate ability to say the COMPLETELY wrong thing at the wrong time. All she talked about all day was death - how she was the last of ten children, how her husband died, etc. etc. etc. I almost knocked her over on purpose at one point because she was hanging on my arm and just kept telling me that all cancers come from smoking and that's probably why my Uncle Ronnie died. EVEN THOUGH, he quit smoking in 1980 and just got stomach and liver cancer, not lung cancer. Sheesh.
Anyway, after the luncheon we went back to Aunt Sue's house so the women could divide up all the leftovers from the mass amount of food that had been made. I ended up with four stuffed cabbages, yay! My favorite. SK and I drove home around four, and got into Columbus around six. Took me longer to drive home than usual because I was being very careful with SK in the car. Didn't want two tragedies in one week.

Hung out with GG at Zuey's later on, but it was incredibly boring. NB came in but for a certain reason he was more interested in another girl than me, and that kinda irritated me. Eminem called about seven times, and I told him there was no way in hell I was driving to Delaware to see him because I had already driven from Cleveland to Columbus today and I just wasn't in the mood or the mental state to be doing more driving. I walked GG home, stopped at Speedway to get more beer, and then headed home. Talked to SL but he was incredibly drunk and at a party so I told him to call me when he got home. I fell asleep around two, and woke up at three fifteen when SL called me to tell me he was home. He didn't think I was going to answer but my phone had already rang from someone else calling so I was half awake. We ended up being on the phone until six thirty this morning. I woke up at one thirty this afternoon when GG called and now she's on her way over so we can go swimming. Yay.

I will write more about SL sometime soon. It's very interesting.