Phoning it in - Part four

Almost immediately after I got off of the phone with the catering manager, it started to ring.

It was Cool Aunt.

My mom is the middle child of five girls and my Cool Aunt is the youngest of the bunch. She's 15 years older than me and after I was born, she would come visit my parents and spend part of her summers in high school playing with me.

She was calling me to let me know three things. This first was how sorry she was. The second was how much she liked my dad. And the third was that all of my aunts would be down for the funeral.

Wow. That was a big deal. I don't really have any memories of my dad and my mom's family interacting.

And then Cool Aunt really surprised me.

She started to cry.

Now keep in mind, Cool Aunt had seen my dad...oh..maybe once in the last 25+ years. Why was she crying?

Was it because both of her parents (my grandparents) had passed away over the last few years? Was it because Number 2 and I were the first of the cousins to lose one of our parents? Or was it just empathy? I dunno.

I told her that I was happy that they were coming down. And the truth is, I'm thrilled that they are coming down.

I think I've said it before but you really can't know how meaningful these gestures of support are until you are going through something like this.

And very few things are better than getting a phone call from Cool Aunt.

VW