Interrupted

My grandfather died early on Saturday morning.

I don't have an obituary written in my mind.  I'd like to put one together later this week, but I can't guarantee that'll happen.  I'd like to, because he was an awesome grandpa.  It may be true that the majority of my childhood memories circle around him somehow.  They're simple memories, about loving his cats and sitting next to him at dinner and climbing on his tractors and naming the pigs.  We didn't do amazing memorable things together - we just spent a lot of time together.  And he was funny and fun, and his life was very different from mine and always beautiful and amazing.

Sophia and I will travel tomorrow.  We will meet my brother and then drive to the funeral.  We'll spend time with a lot of people whom Sophia has never met.  People I haven't seen since before I left high school.  She'll meet second cousins.  And we'll all honor a man I was lucky to call my grandpa.

The travel is tricky.  I need to carry documentation and a notarized letter verifying that I have Dave's permission to take his daughter out of the country.  We'll leave our house at 4:30 in the morning, my 6-year-old and I, to arrive at the airport early because we don't have seats together on any of our flights.  We were lucky simply to have seats at all.  I'm hoping that my Spanish is good enough to manage that request.

It'll be a tough few days.  Sophia won't see many kids the entire trip, and she'll spend a lot of time en route.  After the two flights tomorrow, we still have a 4 hour drive to the funeral.  But it will be well worth it.  She's going because she wants to say good-bye to Grandpa Bob.  I'm looking forward to that as well, and the chance to remember him with so many people who I never felt myself sharing him with. 

It should be a good week.