When we made our plans to come out to California for Spring Break, I never guessed we would attend a funeral. Just a few days before we arrived, we learned about the death of a distant cousin, Joel. He and I were very close in age and I remember playing with him at his grandparents’ house. Because we were in town and Joel’s mom has always been dear to me, I felt compelled to join my parents, Laynie and Sophia for his funeral. The funeral was not the occasion I had wished would have brought us together with Joel’s mom, aunts, uncles and cousins but it was really healing. I was really proud of the boys for maturely going along with the plan even though they did not know who Joel was. The funeral was up in Woodland Hills at St. Mel Parish so we drove up from Manhattan Beach and met the rest of our family there.
The boys could not wait to see Sophia. Having her with us lightened the mood and kept us all in the moment.
After the funeral repast, we went out to lunch with Laynie and Sophia at Red Robin. Just as we were finishing up, we got a call that Monique, Frankie and Camille were pulling into town too! We all reunited at our Manhattan Beach hotel before heading to Island’s for dinner.
It was great fun to be with my sisters and all the cousins. After dinner, Monique and the girls settled in at the hotel and the boys and I drove Laynie and Sophia back to their house in Irvine. It was another day of traveling all over Southern California, another 165 miles to be fairly exact, but being all together made the ground easy to cover.
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