You can meet fun people at funerals

My entire family traveled to Jackson, Tennessee, earlier this week for a funeral. My grandmother's husband Clyde had passed away unexpectedly. Even though he had recently been diagnosed with cancer, we all were just adjusting to the news and preparing for a long battle. Instead, his heart gave out.

I wasn't sure who would be at the funeral home, since Clyde didn't have any siblings and my grandmother's only sister had been dead since 1946. But when we arrived, my dad, after greeting his mom, went straight over to an older man and woman, and they all hugged and looked really happy to see each other.

It was my dad's cousins, Donny and Sookie, who had always inhabited the stories in my grandmother' phone calls over the years. Her niece and nephews had remained close to my grandmother after their mother's death. Donny and Sookie lived in Halls, Tennessee, a tiny town in between Millington and Dyersburg. North of Nutbush, south of Cat Corner. They were always in visiting distance, even when my grandmother moved to the Land Between the Lakes area of Kentucky. And from her stories, I could tell they kept in touch.

I only remember actually meeting Donny once, when I was probably 8 or 9 and staying with my grandmother one weekend when she still lived in Memphis. Donny dropped by the house one evening, as my grandmother was making dinner. One reason I always liked staying with her is because she bought that Parkay squeeze margarine and let me put as much as I wanted on corn on the cob.

We were in her kitchen, and this man knocks on the carport door. My grandmother was all excited to see him. He came in and acted like he wants to show them something. He had this .44 Magnum pistol that he showed my grandmother and her husband, and the room got real reverent, which put me on alert because they were never reverent.

I have no idea why he had that gun. I'm not sure if he worked in law enforcement or security or was simply a permitted carrier. But I do remember how huge it was and how it changed the atmosphere of that room.

At the funeral home, Donny's wife Sookie had a quick smile and a great sense of humor. I don't know how this could be surmised at a funeral, but I noticed it about her right away. We joked about my grandmother because she has an, um, strong personality that's easy to, uh, joke about. Sookie told me her granddaughter worked in Brentwood, and I found myself living a cliche when I started to say something about how it's a shame that it takes a funeral to get us all together and how it would be so great if we could visit more often. I didn't say it, though. I kinda knew it wouldn't happen.

Once I'm in this rut here, with kids and schedules and bank statements and vacation days, it often feels like it would take TNT to blast me out of it.

Still, I heard my dad say something about a reunion, so I have hope to see them again soon.

We'll see.

I have to, though, because my goal is to find out Sookie's "real" name.