Don's Funeral Saturday- we are driving to Cape Cod for Chris� Ex Step dad�s very late funeral service. Don died of cancer & was cremated probably a couple of months ago. Chris� two half sisters and his mother Carolyn will be there. Friday night my husband and I sat flipping through some of his childhood photographs. Every time we look at old photos & odd letters Chris gets teary eyed. We woke up at 7am and left for Cape Cod. Driving up to Cape Cod always gives me an eerie feeling. The roads have something very lonely about them, as if there are ghosts floating about. We arrive in Yarmouth & turn into a very small church where all of his smoking family members stand. The funeral is very intimate with about a dozen people; we walk to the burial site accompanied by the sounds of a bagpipe. There is a small cardboard box in which Don�s body now lay in ashes. The girls start shaking and shivering with tears and I again wonder why some parents are so selfish. I picture them as two little girls longing for their dad. Now beautiful and no longer teenagers, they are crying like a couple of 6 year olds that their mom took away with her divorce. I secretly mumble something bad about the mom under my breath then look around at Carolyn. She�s standing in the back looking uncomfortable. Not at all like the gorgeous twenty something knockout she once was. She was an �I-can-do anything & have-anything-in-the-world� girl. She looks old at age 57 with wrinkles from cigarette smoking & too much sun. I know she feels guilty for robbing all 3 children of their dads with her divorces. Today she looks withdrawn standing behind her girls who look like they won�t share this day with their mother. I ask if she wants to go up to the gravesite, she says "Oh I can't, it hurts too much." Either I don't get Carolyn or I am confused & judgemental because she sounds almost selfish. I tell her I will go with her then lead Carolyn to the gravesite. She says her last goodbye. The uncle/brother of Don, with his enormous pot belly & red face stands back the entire time. I don't understand this dynamic, apparently he's taking all of Don's assets even though Don owes his daughters child support worth about 10 years. There�s no way for me to understand their memories, the pain and the sadness they must feel with Don�s death. It is especially impossible combined with horrible information regarding Don as a neglectful dad and a husband. The girls are still crying for the memory of their dad. Still there was no child support, no one who went after Don and now there is no will. There is absolutely nothing for the girls, not even a piece of lint from Don. He probably leaves them with a lifetime of sadness & a short childhood memories. It's the kind that's heartwrenching. As Lauren reads a small story for her dad, all our hearts cry for that tiny girl who probably hugged her daddy everyday & longed for him. They may never overcome this complex feeling. The serenity that would surround a funeral is completely destroyed. Maybe a few of us stood in silence with huge thinking bubbles over our heads. There's just too much 'crap' in this family. As the recession comes to a close, Chris is missing. He had brought with him an old photograph of himself on a motorbike that Don had given him as a present. The photograph shows Chris' face lit up & looking incredibly joyous on his new bike with a helmet on. Someone had taken the photo years ago & this particular picture was one of his happiest 'looking' & one of my favorite photos. When I found him later on, he was teary eyed. He had burried the photograph with Don's ashes & looked as confused as the hundred different emotions crossed over him. Carolyn calls on the Father�s day & cries on the phone for 2 hours. I understand how she feels right now, but this doesn't seem like a good time for her to be asking for attention. Regardless of who divorced who and who left who, her children are busy focusing on their lost dad. May be they even think Carolyn had taken them away from their dad. I know Chris is thinking about his own dad, in someways he feels Don was more of a dad to him than his own ever was. We both look at our baby & sometimes wonder how any parent can leave their infant baby without literally dying to see them. It�s about time his dad came to see his grandson who�s 13 months old. Then again, the man has no concept of what a child is either. I do somwhat disrespect him for hurting my sweet husband when he was a baby. I would smack him one if that could give Chris his dad back. Broken homes bring broken hearts. No matter how strong you are, you grow up wishing you had two loving parents. These days it's something so many of us overlook.

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