Samm and I drove up to Memphis for her Uncle Tommy’s funeral. I never met Tommy, but he was a very important figure in Samm’s family life. She was obviously heart broken when I told her the news. Later in the day she had written me a really heartfelt message telling me how sorry she was for the way things had gone this Summer, and I can’t really begin to paraphrase it all. I guess I would just say it had a lot of things in it that I just needed to hear. That’s all. We got up to Memphis at 3 AM and had to be down in the hotel lobby at 8. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her mother since she had came to visit us and things went haywire. This was a good chance for everyone to not only heal, but to spend some quality time together. It reminded me of something that I heard recently: sometimes through tragedy, we manage to come together and be closer. After spending an entire night of driving with uniterupted time with my wife, and then meeting the other half of her family that obviously loved and cherished this man that we had all gathered to honor, and seeing them so glad to see Samantha, I can whole heartedly agree with that statement. Through a death, we managed to grow closer. All of us. It is what he would have wanted.
