A Wedding and a Funeral

Barb had to buy me new clothes for the wedding of the daughter of one her tennis friends.

We left a little late and got to the wedding just on time.  We sat with Barb’s tennis friends at the ceremony.  Somehow they were seated on the groom’s side of the room.  So unfortunately, we couldn’t see the bride’s face during the ceremony.

At the reception, the father of the bride made a funny speech.  When he reached into his pocket to get out his speech, a long roll of paper fell onto the floor.  He said that it wasn’t his speech it was the bill for the wedding.  Then we went on to tell many silly puns.

Barb and I enjoyed some of the dancing.  I remarked that young people don’t dance anymore.

Later in the evening, Barb was complaining that she didn’t like the music.  However, the young people were all up and dancing.  I guess they were waiting for all the old people like us to leave so that the DJ would play their kind of music.  

 

We do the same thing in Florida.  We have to wait for all of the old people to go home before the DJ plays the music from the 70’s and 80’s that we like.

It turned out that the clothes Barb bought me for the wedding would be useful soon after to go to a funeral.

One of Barb’s old volleyball friends’ son was attacked while protecting a girl from her ex-boyfriend. Barb followed the story on the news.  She also read all of the posts on his Facebook page.  The 21 year-old boy eventually died and the ex-boyfriend was charged with first-degree murder.

We knew the family well although we hadn't seen them for a while.  They organized get-together for families like us who all had babies at the same time.  We got together a few times with all the parents and kids.  Barb searched through her photo albums and found a couple of pictures of the group.

Barb and one of her volleyball friends went to the wake.  Then the next day, Barb and I went to the funeral.  It was a very nice ceremony.  One of the family friends, who we used to get together with back in the old days, was a pastor and presided over the ceremony.  He read a number of quotes from the boy’s Facebook page.  One of the boy’s friends played the guitar and sang two songs.  There were two very good eulogies.  Then one of the boy’s sisters read a touching poem that she wrote for the occasion entitled “My Hero”.

The death of someone so young helped put things into perspective for me.  My troubles with the fastball administration seemed very trivial in comparison.