Today I rode to Altoona with my Aunt Donna and Uncle Leo to attend services for my Uncle Paul.  I guess we're lucky we made it down there given the crazy woman on Scalp who ran out into traffic.  I can't believe we managed to avoid her.  A small blessing for sure.

No one enjoys funerals, I get this, but for me it's a mix of thoughts that leads down different paths.  I'm sure everyone with intellect feels this way too as they start to ponder the typical questions (especially when your mom, aunts, and uncles are all getting up in age), such as "who is next".  I also look at my cousins and I truly feel for them all while thinking how blessed they are to have had both parents for so very long, and how impossible it is to be prepared for how it feels to loose a parent.  At the same time, I acknowledge too the fortune of a quick passing.  It is, all I ask for when my time comes. I am a bit sad of the reminder that while I may recognize most of my cousins, I don't really know them, I haven't seen some of them in quite a few years.  It's driven home when you see their kids and their youngest is taller than you are!

Then there is Altoona in general:  heading to churches I frequented with my mother when I was young, going to the cemetery where my father is buried, having a lunch at the Bavarian Hall (where my father took me most every Saturday night after church for a soda and french fries).  I made it through most of the day with only one person calling me Jackie too!