I Suck At Visiting The Cemetery

on friday, my son (braden) had some unexpected company.

my mother came down for a visit on friday. she was required to take an online training course for her work. the only problem... my mother does not have access to the internet. (well, technically she does. she still has a dial up connection on her home computer, but she rarely goes on the internet.)

because the online training course had streaming video, my mother could not exactly take the course at her house. thus, i asked my mom if she wanted to come over and use my computer. and so, she came over after work on friday.

before she started the training course, however, my mom and i went to visit braden at the cemetery. now i suck at visiting the cemetery. all right... perhaps i don't really. in the mornings, i say "hello and good morning" to my son as i pass by the cemetery on my way to work (or on my way to drop off karen at work). i also try to go inside the cemetery as often as i can. i'm hoping some day things will get easier when i visit braden because i still miss him a lot.

but i suppose i should consider myself somewhat lucky. some people don't even get the chance to even meet their son, if only for a week. i think the holidays are definitely going to be hard this year.

anyway, the unexpected visitors at braden's grave site were not my mom or i... the unexpected visitors were wild turkeys (and i don't mean a bunch of drunk guys at the bar). nope, i mean... wild... with feathers and a throat wattle... turkeys.

(pictured below is one of the turkeys at braden's site.)


my mom counted at least six of them. it was wild... literally. i was actually hesitant to get out of the car at first because i was not sure if wild turkeys attacked or not. after all, i didn't want to star in the next "when turkeys attack" video or something like that. my mom, on the other hand, had no problem. she was all smiles and in awe... and she hopped right out of the car.

when we approached braden's site, the turkeys calmly walked away. it was nice that the turkeys came to visit my son. i almost felt like they were there to wish him a happy thanksgiving. of course, i could just be crazy. but seeing the turkeys there was very nice. the sight made me think that turkeys wanted to kick off the holidays with my son. so maybe this holiday season won't be so bad. i don't know.

as an added bonus, the family headstone was installed on the plot. i realize it seems very odd to get excited over a headstone. i'm just glad the headstone was installed before the winter season... and the snow... and all that. the company that installed the headstone (quincy memorials) wanted to have the headstone in place for us before thanksgiving. i thought that was very nice of them. quincy memorials, however, did not have enough time to finish braden's marker yet. so, we're still waiting on that. but i must say, braden's site is starting to come around.