My parents both died on October 18, though eight years apart. Mother was buried in Raleigh, where I spent most of my young life. Daddy, though, had lived with me in Tennessee for his last two years, so I shipped his body to North Carolina to be buried next to his beloved.<\/p>\n
I was busy when I got to Raleigh, meeting with folks at the funeral home and at the cemetery to make final arrangements.<\/p>\n
A woman at the cemetery office said, “So, we’re burying your mother.”<\/p>\n
“No,” I said. “You already have my mother. My father is joining her.” I had already discussed our situation with these people over the phone and was surprised by the error.<\/p>\n
“Oh,” she said with great sympathy. “You’re an orphan!”<\/p>\n
What?<\/p>\n
I looked at her and then at George. Opened my mouth, then closed it. Then opened and closed it again, without words.<\/p>\n
Like a fish. Completely speechless.<\/p>\n
Surely it wasn’t proper etiquette for a cemetery administrator to call a grieving family member an orphan<\/em>.<\/p>\n It took a minute or two, but I finally recovered enough to say, “Actually, my Heavenly Father adopted me so I’m not<\/em> an orphan.”<\/p>\n She said nothing, but kept her smile intact.<\/p>\n “I’m surprised you would say that,” I added.<\/p>\n Still smiling. Seemingly unaware she had said anything inappropriate.<\/p>\n I shook my head, trying to make sense of this woman, then focused on paperwork that needed to be done for the burial.<\/p>\n Later, as we walked to the car, pent-up emotions got the best of me and I began raving about stupid people. Then I looked at George. And saw him quietly laughing.<\/p>\n Suddenly, I was, too.<\/p>\n We still laugh about it, years later.<\/p>\n I don’t know if the lady’s comment was intentional or if she was simply an idiot. I do know I’m grateful for humorous moments.<\/p>\n We could use more of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My parents both died on October 18, though eight years apart. Mother was buried in Raleigh, where I spent most of my young life. Daddy, though, had lived with me in Tennessee for his last two years, so I shipped his body to North Carolina to be buried next to his beloved. I was busy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}