Seven Years to Make a Piper

Great Uncle Melvin died last week. His funeral was yesterday in Layton.

We were selected, due to our proximity to the funeral, to represent the family.

The last email we had from the family said they would send another email with the address of the church where the services were going to be held at 11:00.

We got everybody up and dressed and were off by 10, but despite Handsome Husband's exquisite directional sense and ecolocution skills, we could not find the chapel. He even bought 2 newspapers and looked in the obits to get an address, but Great Uncle Melvin wasn't in there any longer. I was ready to give up and go home, but Handsome Husband decided to give it one last try, and went to the library to look online. It took a lot of looking, even for him, but we finally found an address. Of a chapel, not a residence.

This is where I would have been lost without either a map-and-compass, or Handsome Husband himself. Well, OK, he did have a map. Online. Not something we have the technology to take with us in the car. He looked at the map, knew instinctively which way north was and thus which way to turn on the streets we were presented with, and got us to the church only 25 minutes late. But it was a long funeral, so we still got to hear an hour's worth of what a great guy Great Uncle Melvin was. And he really seemed to have been a great guy. I was sorry I never met him.

Afterwards, there was a luncheon provided by the Relief Society of the ward (bless their hearts) and we talked to several family members who noted our attendance and rattled off whatever parts of genealogical charts were required in the conversation. Some people could go through the whole thing, with kids, grandkids, their spouses, where they were now and what their profession was, or what they had died of and when. They also took pictures, so we have proof for the rest of the family that we were there. Duty done, and we got a free lunch.