Wednesday was one of those days.  It had all the makings of being a good but uneventful day…and then something changed.

We went to speech… our last speech session… and something was  a little different.  Our speech therapist rents office space from a Methodist church.  There’s a few community agencies that are on the property but, the fact remains, its a church.  There’s the big sanctuary and the to the side of the parking lot is a corridor and little offices.  We head down there for speech.

So, in  the time we’ve been coming here, there have been many church events, councils, celebrations.  But, there has never been a funeral.  I would think we would have run into this situation prior to Wedneday but we hadn’t.  I pulled in the parking lot, there were tons of cars and a hearse.

Initially I panicked over what kind of questions I might get from Anna Grace.  But I was 15 minutes early for our session, the funeral is already in session and looks like its been going for a little while, and we won’t be leaving here for over an hour.  So… what’s the liklihood that this funeral and associated activities will still be going on when its time to leave? (And the astute among you are now starting to snicker!)

We leave speech therapy, head down the corridor and Oh NO!  They have moved the hearse to the corner of the parking lot that is right by the opening of the corridor and the people are in 2 lines.  Kinda like the lines that a bride and groom run in between (does that make any sense?).  And the people are lightly clapping as the casket is riding on the wheelie cart in between these 2 lines of people and cruisin’ toward the hearse.  Flowers on top. The whole nine yards.

I, being not nearly as astute as the rest of you, did not notice and process what was goin’ down until we were at the end of the corridor and I was jolted into reality by Anna Grace yelling out “What’s in the box? You see that box?”. I shoved my hand over her mouth which made her freak out and I grabbed her and start bolting down to the other side of the corridor.  I thought since the corridor ends at a side street we could just walk around the block to our car and my daughter would leave the mourners undisturbed.

Nice plan.  Too bad it didn’t work out that way.

We get to the other end of the corridor and it is blocked by a whole bunch of folks unloading things into the church thrift store.  And then someone turned on a leaf blower.  Now… Anna Grace has auditory defensiveness.  Really loud things like that freak. her. out. So now we must leave that side of the corridor and get as far away from the noise as possible.

So lets review.  I am trapped with Anna Grace between a coffin and a leaf blower.  We headed back to the coffin.

I begged Anna Grace to be quiet.  I did.  I threatened.  I gave dirty looks.  I did.  She didn’t care.

“Is that a present?”

“Is it for me?”

“You see that car?  That’s a funny looking toaster car.”

“You see those flowers?”

“Is it a party?”

“Is somebody in there?”

Thankfully, the people who could hear her were laughing themselves silly.  I, on the other hand, just wanted to crawl under a rock.