First I must explain what lead to our outing... Veg and I had lots to do around the house that required cleaning, prepping fresh food, making another batch of deodorant...Ya no! Normal things that people do on Sundays.
Instead we started playing Scrabble...yes Scrabble...And the boy gets a dictionary and will call you out on words that he doesn't think are real. Anyway... at some point we wanted smoothies, but I didn't have any fresh fruit..All used up!! Sigh sigh sob sob...
What is one to do?? Go shopping of course... But on our way to shopping we must stop at a park where we happened to see a convoy of motorcycles going by (that was pretty cool) and then played some Tennis, and Basketball and a little bit of a research project...
Why the research project?? Well I will tell you why! There is a big deal every school year that requires all kids from age 6-10 to pick a famous historical figure and then spend a month researching that figure and put on a little show at the end of the month about their historical person.... A note came home, that said "Talk to your kids about who they may want to do the project about"....
I thought...WOW, he is going to have a hard time choosing someone, we'll need to go to the library and check out a bunch of books, and we'll need to search the web and... and... and..... All these thoughts going through my head... I'm thinking someone from the Military or Government as he always talks about that.
So he gets in the car and I mentioned the script from the teacher and before I even finished he Rattled off a name... REALLY? That quick? Are you sure? YUP!!! Turns out the name is someone he just saw on a plaque recently regarding a person that helped with Desegregation.
But as far as I know this isn't a Nationally famous person, nor are any books written about him and I was certain this wasn't "Historical Enough" The subject matter was great, but had he been dead long enough to be considered a "Famous Historical" person?
We sent a note to the school... They of course had to research this themselves and found not a lot of info... But they said, if we could prove that he was deceased and find enough info for the project including pictures, that they were willing to go along with it because of Veg's excitement. (I love his school)
But NOW we have to find the proof and the pictures and research materials.... Leave it to my kid to pick someone that is neither famous nor has a literature trail... But did so many wonderful things that is well worth an entire Novel to be written....
Sooo back to our Sunday outing... We found the Plaque and all the info we could find on his historical figure and hopefully that will work when sent back to school tomorrow (I just printed everything that we took pictures of) and they came out pretty good (I think)
And then we went to the Health Food store where we had someone else make us delicious smoothies, and got some lunch from the deli including a Vegan dessert (Shhhh! don't tell)
But guess what I found???? Its that time of year again!!!!
Yay!!
Then on our way home Veg was asking lots of "death" questions after his research project, and we pass a Cemetery so he requested we stop.
And so we did!
We read some of the stones and he looked at the pictures and info.....I answered his thousands of questions... and when we came up on some fresh sites (with the hay still down) and the stones brand new with 2009, some of them still had temp tags instead of stones from a week or two ago. Many were people who have lived full lives but recently found their last day.
Others at age 19 and 21 listed as "Iraqi Freedom" I think we both got lumps in our chest.... Veg said it was time to go and then changed his mind.... And then officially decided it was time to go after he seemed to be at peace with his questions....
And so we did!
But have to say this one caught my eye...
On one side of the stone it had the guy's name and all his accomplishments and who he was.... On the other side where his wife was buried it just said:
And I read so much in to this... I mean, when they passed away maybe know one knew who she was and so that was the standard procedure. Maybe she really was just a Wife and never thought of herself as more. Maybe its just a stone and means absolutely nothing. But after 78 years of life, so many more stories seems like they could be told.... then just "HIS WIFE"
After All, I don't even want a stone... But if I did have one, I wouldn't want to only be known for all eternity as "His Wife" I mean our lives are filled with so much more. If nothing this past couple years I've begun to learn a little about myself... Yes I'm a mother, a wife, a workerbee, a daughter, a Sister, Grand Daughter, Daugther-n-law.... I have lots of labels... including Fruit Loop, Strange person, Granola, blah blah blah.... But I am a person.... A person with a story that just so happens to also be "his wife"....
And seeing her lack of story, kind of made me sad for her... whomever she may be... I hope she had a good story!
So there you go... the story of our Sunday Outing... now its time to do all that house stuff....