Up bright and early, showered and went to the lobby for the free breakfast.
J joined us, BA wanted to sleep in for a bit, so we decided to go get donuts at a small mom and pop donut shop that had been in business for several generations (tasty), then drive around so the boys could reminisce. It was very relaxing and fun listening to their childhood stories and seeing houses that their friends lived in. They passed by their first house and marveled at the fact that the extension on the back was still standing, as J and B had built it one summer. They were pretty tickled about seeing everything again, the good memories.
We got back to the hotel around 0930 to pick up BA and then drove to M's house because we had received her permission to download B's scanned photographs from his hard drive. They mirrored the entire drive onto two external hard drives to go over later when we got home.
We couldn't help but notice that the turkey wrap sandwiches were sitting on the kitchen counter. No idea how long they were sitting there, along with a platter of cookies (that were rock hard) and some tangerines in a bowl. Despite being told that the church would provide plenty of food, M wanted to take all of that stuff to "get rid of it", and had a container of quart sized glad bags. She wanted to stop at the store for gallon sized bags, but I told her there were plenty in her downstairs pantry, and retrieved them.
BA and I snuck to the side and planned that we would have M go into the church first and we would bring the sandwiches and cookies... which we would then toss in the dumpster at the side of the church because there was no way we were poisoning a whole congregation.
It also didn't escape our notice that she had a stack of paperwork on the table and the shredder near her chair. We have no idea what she was shredding.
J's phone rang and he ran downstairs to take the call... from the lawyer. He came back and told us that B never signed his new will. Neither of them signed the Durable Power of Attorney, so neither document was legally binding. His old will gave everything to M, the boys weren't named at all, and that was that. There was no need to go to the reading of the will, there was nothing we could do with M because the state of Washington had very strict laws about having someone put in a home, and we couldn't legally take anything out of the house without her consent. There was NOTHING we could do for her other than be there to support her, provide her with guidance, and then stand back while she yelled at us and accuse us of horrible things. Okey dokey then.
We drove to the service and M decided that she was only going to bring the tangerines, but would come back out for the cookies and sandwiches later (leaving them in the truck... longer... euw). We got some pretty strange looks from the congregation that came for the lunch. We sat at a table and a few people from the boys' past came up and chatted, but for the most part nobody even approached us. We tried to be sociable, but at one point I walked up to someone to introduce myself and they turned and walked away.
At some point, BA managed to talk to someone and came back to the table and said "that was weird, they were just telling me how it was such a shame that none of us could ever come visit their parents and how they never saw us... and how we weren't even expected to show up for the service." Um... every year. EVERY YEAR hubby came to Oregon and stayed with J and BA and their parents came to spend a week with them. J and BA would be at their house when they could get a pup sitter for their pets, and spent Christmas with them every year. M and B would drive to J and BA's house a lot, and they would fly out to our house. NEVER saw us?
The service was about to start, and M sat at the end of a pew, I feel bad, but I pushed BA into the pew first so she'd have to sit next to M, but it was every person for themselves at this point. The boys sat in front of us as they were scheduled to stand up and say a few words.
There was a table with the pictures that M picked out and I noticed that she had picked photos that had her in them... but there were NONE with the whole family, and none of them had the boys in them.
After some preaching and some group singing, the boys were asked to come up and tell their fond memories. J explained that their father was strict, but fair. M then said in a loud voice "You both deserved everything you got". BA and I did that slow, boiling turn toward her, she kind of smiled and shut up and let them speak.
The pastor then read M's tribute to B, which was essentially a nicer version of the toast she screamed out at the relatives house the night before, but instead of B working at the family store, in this version he worked at the bus station loading luggage into the bus.
After more signing and sermons (at one point J was overcome with emotion, and G hugged him and said something to make him laugh) the ceremony ended and everyone gathered toward the front near the flowers. Hubby's company had sent a rather large display of white roses and flowers. Someone else sent a bouquet of red roses, and then there was another smaller vase of assorted flowers. M walked up and said "I've had my eye on those white flowers, aren't they wonderful?". I said "oh yes, hubby's company sent those". M's face fell, like I just announced that they weren't flowers, but used toilet paper or something. She then said "oh, well, I don't want those in my house". She then turned to the pastor and said "can't we give those to the hospice or something". The pastor thought that having a funeral arrangement sent to a hospice wouldn't be a wise move, and offered to donate them to some place that would appreciate them. She huffed off after that. The pastor did remove one flower from each bouquet and gave that to her. (We found them in the trash later).
People seemed more comfortable approaching us and old family friends were telling stories. M was a bit miffed that people weren't paying attention to her, so she interrupted everyone by telling a story about how she made one of her uncles so mad that the uncle threw her in a mud puddle. She seemed very proud of that for some odd reason.
We finally managed to leave after almost everyone was gone, and we asked her if she wanted to go anywhere. She wanted to go home, so we took her home. We asked her if she wanted us to come in and spend time with her, and she said no, she wanted to be alone. We asked her if she wanted to go out later for dinner and she said NO, you go out and have a nice dinner.
We left. We went back to the hotel and crammed the platter of turkey sandwiches in the outside hotel trash bin along with the cookies, sat in the lobby for a bit and then went out to have a wonderful and relaxing dinner at Outback, where we pretty much sat there and went "holy crap, WTF?" After that we walked around Best Buy in a haze, went back to the hotel and talked about what we could do for her: nothing. She refused to let us do anything, we couldn't help her because she'd go nuts on us, she didn't want us to be at the will reading, or take her around to ensure her finances were in order... we decided that the only thing we could do was in the morning we'd pick up the ashes so she wouldn't have to do that (and drive).
