i'm sure it's been said in the finer print

Strange, a whole house full of laughing, playing cousins when everything is supposed to be so sad. The joy of children almost makes death feel impossible. I guess we, as a family, could have been more subdued and solemn, but my uncle thought it was better that Christian and Carson be kept busy with paintball and movies and home improvement projects. And the love of a bushel of kin.

While the funeral procession idled in front of the house, I saw Tim and his two boys standing on the front porch. They were carrying Shelia's portrait, taken on her wedding day. Christian and Carson leaned against one another and gazed at her face. Tim had an arm around each.

There were 800 or so people at the funeral. I only learned this later, after we were back at the house. The church was full, sure, but apparently so many people had come, so many had been touched by Shelia's joy and generosity and faith and goodness, that people were willing to sit or stand in the hallways under the church and just listen. They set up monitors in the pastor's office, in the Sunday School room, in the Fellowship Hall, in the coat closet. People stood outside, even. It was a much finer testament to what she gave than any eulogy could have been.

- My cousins nicknamed me Doozy. For no real reason at all. Sean started it and Carson and Stevie ran with it.
- I challenged the three cousins mentioned above to a Silent Contest. They were yammering a mile a minute and I said I would give $5 to the person who could refrain from speaking the longest. Two of them made it all the way to the register at the store we were in, so I threw a fiver to both of them.
- I have never seen so many flower arrangements in my life. Saturday morning we took two cars, 6 people, and about 25 huge baskets/vases of plants/flowers to a local hospital for distribution among patients there. I had a Bed of Roses moment in the backseat, my face all framed with lilies and carnations and snapdragons. All that was missing was Christian Slater.
- Southern Hospitality is an artform.
- After this carbohydrate coma wears off, I am SO back in the gym. I think I was trying to show support and solidarity by eating tons of the sympathy food that was dropped at the house. Tim and the boys weren't eating it, so everyone else kind of shoveled it down. Weird.
- My Aunt Jayne went to Biscuitville, thinking they would have all kinds of biscuit flavors. Cheese, onion, everything, etc. She soon realized that all the biscuits were the same, and that their only real claim to variety is that you can get pretty much ANY pork product on that one kind of biscuit. Including a porkchop.
- My tattoo artist's name was Dragon. I had to dangle my hand between his legs while he worked on me. He said, "Just don't be grabbin' me."
- Zebulon. Ellicott City. Ten Ten Road. The Ni and Po Rivers. Pumpkins Restaurant. Piggly Wiggly.
- My dad told me that he used eat at In and Out Burger (In 'n' Out?), and that he would use a razorblade to cut the B and the R out of the bumperstickers so they would read, "In and Out, In and Out, the _urge_s that it's all about." Urges. Hehe.