Dharma and a funeral

Earlier this week my grandmother passed away.  Funerals are hard on people already, so I was not sure how a funeral accompanied by Dharma was going to go.  I have to say she did remarkably well (for her) and only caused me to hang my head in disbelief a few times.  I only had to take her outside 3 or 4 times to calm down during the wake and I only rushed her out of the viewing room twice; both times before anyone else noticed her.  I think.

When we went into the funeral home we went up to see my grandmother and Dharma whispered to me, "Is she going to say anything?"  Sigh, here we go.  "No"  I answered, "We talked about this."  Dharma nodded her head and I thought that would be the end of it.  After a while she asked me if we could go back up.  I took her and Dharma stood right there in front of the room and said "Is she STILL dead?"  I immediately took her out of the viewing room.  She ran around, got into the water fountain, explored and eventually found the food.  She was content there for a long time trying to eat her weight in blueberries.

As the night went on Dharma removed both shoes, would run when she thought I couldn't see her and walk when she knew I could and lay down in the middle of the floor.  Not too bad.  I only caught her trying to pull flowers from the arrangements once, chased her out from behind a couch once, and saw her trying to figure out how to get behind the casket once.  Again, a pretty mild night for Dharma.

The next morning was the funeral.  We talked with Dharma ahead of time about keeping quiet during the ceremony and not running around.  Which she pretty much did.  Instead of running around, she decided to climb underneath the chairs and lay there.  Then she tried to climb underneath the couch in front of us.  Since she was being quiet I decided to let it go.  As embarrassed as I was that my child was crawling around on the floor under peoples chairs, there was no use in trying to make her sit in the chair if it was only going to cause her to yell.

We got to the cemetery and the pastor was giving his last speech when Dharma decided she wanted to go sit by the casket.  So sit right down in front of it she did.  And she smelled the flowers, literally.  She leaned over and smelled the flowers on either side of her.  While she was doing this I started to step forward to get her and thought again that it may be better to let her sit there than to grab her and cause her to scream.  Then I had this thought: Dharma was holding her beloved Boo-Boo Bear.  There was a large hole behind Dharma.  I just knew Boo-Boo was some how going to end up in that hole.  I held my breath waiting and Dharma got up and went back to her seat.  Catastrophe diverted.  Somehow.

We went to eat as people normally do after a funeral.  Dharma was pretty good.  At least the people who were sitting far away from her probably thought she was pretty good.  Those of us sitting with her knew that she was cutting up her smiley face french fries into little pieces while making them beg for their lives.  In a high pitched voice, Dharma made them say, "No.  Please don't cut me up.  Help me.  Owwww."

So whatever forces were keeping Dharma tame over the last few days...Thank you.