We Lost Mom & Dad!

You how it's pretty easy to find someone in a 137 acre cemetary, especially when you stood right there and put them into the ground?

Yeah, well, apparently we didn't get that memo - - -

After this year's family reunion campout I parked up in The Sister's driveway for a few days, where I was kicked back minding my own business when somebody - I don't remember now which one of us it was - piped up with the great(?) idea of going to visit

The Matter & Patter's grave since it's been two years since we were last there for a one-sided chin-wag.

So we loaded one of the cars with a few essentials, some garden tools, and ourselves, and headed off like we knew what we were doing - straight into rush-hour traffic! (who's running this cluster-fudge?)

After carving through the traffic like gladiators on a mission we got to the grandly named Oakland Hills Memorial Gardens, but here's where things went a little Monty Pythonish.

We collectively knew knew we needed to park alonside one of the tracks at the base of a hill, climb just over the crest of said hill, and find Mom & Dad on the other side.

We cruised on in, found the hill, clamored out of our chariot, grabbed an array of landscaping weaponry, and confidently set off uphill like a merry band of - well I don't know which band it was, but it was a band.

We crested the hill with purpose, paused when that purpose abandoned us as we looked around and said 'this doesn't look right', turned around, and headed back downhill. Only slightly deflated, we loaded everything, including ourselves, back into the car to try again.

OK, just so you know, this place is divided into 28 distinct " memorial gardens" and everyone of those is on top of a hill!

By the time we went up our third hill it was less of noble knights with implements held high picking their way gently around the reposing residents, and more of weary pilgrams dragging their goods behind and not carring who's head they stepped on.

Defeated again, we clumped back down like three of the 7 dwarves at the end of a long day in the mines. I won't say who was which, but Grumpy was involved and Happy - well, wasn't.

Though I suspect Mom was having a right old time watching us fumble around.

To this point one of us, again not naming names, (it might have been me - I mean Doppey) had been insisting the parental units were on the east side of the property on an east-facing slope looking down on the remains of an old service road.

Fed up with this nonsense one of The Sisters said bullshit, took charge, and lead us off in the other direction where we found our AWOL family members on the first try.

This time on the west side of the central lake, on the east slope of a hill looking down on the remains of an old service road where, as boys, Dad and our uncle - at the time a boy that lived a few houses down the lakeshore from Dad's - rode horses on summer afternoons. 

We did a little cleanup, some contemplating, and shared a few reminisces,

then decided, with or without the parents' permision, that after all that farting around we had each earned a Culver's vanilla, with raspberries and chocolate syrup, sundae before heading back to the house and going through a few of Mom’s old photo albums.