Taking Kids to the Cemetery, Talking About Death and Spirits

Today marks 30 years that my Great Aunt Eva June Michael Wilkerson has been dead. In her honor we are going fishing because she loved to fish with her husband. She didn't have any kids but was the best mom ever, if you know what I mean. My daughter Eva is named after her. My son Michael is named after the whole family ... there were 7 kids in my grandma's family.

Yesterday we had to go to the Scout shop, which is up the street from where my mom works. She works at a florist. I decided to visit her and get some flowers and take a trip across town to Aunt Eva's grave. It was a last-minute adventure. Here are some pictures!

I have some funny videos to upload to YouTube soon ... of the kids yelling at each other to get off the headstones and me saying, "They are dead. They don't care. Just stay on our family's headstones because they know our kind of crazy."

Eva's grave. She was married to Max, who was her second husband. Like me, she was married to a real jerk the first time around and found her true love the second time.

All my kids hanging out with Eva and Max, who loved kids! So many things I could say about Eva, but the things I remember the most are that she was a great cook, worked as a lunch lady, worked at Russell Stover so she knew what every chocolate was by looking at the top, ate Tic Tacs and always let me sit at her vanity and put on her red lipstick and powder my face. And she loved flowers. And ornery kids. And cussing.

This picture makes me think I should have named Sam "Max" instead ... Sam and Eva are so close. But I didn't want the same initials on two kids since I write about them all the time in shorthand. Goofy me! Yes, Eva is wearing boy clothes today.

This is the headstone for my mom's cousin, who died in a car crash when she was 14. My kids and I talked about it and how the headstone says, "She is not dead, she is just away."

Me and the naughties. We had a lot of fun at the cemetery, if you can believe it. We were surrounded by lots of family ... I took lots of headstone pictures. My grandma is the last of her brothers and sisters for many  years now.

Little Eva hanging out with Aunt Eva. Are you shocked that she is standing on the headstone? Guess what? When you walk anywhere in a cemetery you are walking over dead bodies. Last week one night while we were praying in our bedroom, our bathroom light randomly went out. The light bulb was fine. We think it was Aunt Eva messing with the lights. We choose to not be freaked out by stuff like that and are happy to know our dead family members may be watching over us ... including my dad's grandma (Nanny) and Papa Guy and Max and Aron's grandparents and more. It's comforting to us.

This is Joel POUNDING AUNT EVA. Okay, so she used to get little kids in a hug and pat their back and say, "I'm gonna pound you!" So we all pound our kids now and Aunt Eva needed to be pounded.

I later told Michael thank you for coming along with me on our little journey and he says, "I didn't really have a choice." Yep, that's the Michael family humor in him = ornery! One last weird note: my grandma has these dolls called Pickaninnies ... it's like a racially bad word, I know. These are the cutest little black dolls ever and they are the only thing I have spoken up about wanting to have when Grandma dies because they were Aunt Eva's. Here's the thing:

There are 3 BOY dolls and 2 GIRL dolls, just like my family!*

*Yeah, I know I could still get knocked up and all that, then I'll just have to hit eBay to buy more of them to make the set like my own family. That's me ... always thinkin'. Now I know my mom is crying over this post and my dad is passed out on the floor with me mentioning having another kid. Gotta go. My work here is done.