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Of course the night J and I headed to Tulsa was the night Chicago (our layover city) was battling a slew of storms. We left work quite early to be at the airport the recommended hour and a half before departure, which then amounted to us wasting a lot of time at the airport. I hate checking bags, and it makes it worse when the only reason you're checking a bag is because of some face soap and lotion. By the time we boarded the plane, everyone was anxious to go. The pilot congratulated us on a timely boarding, then announced that weather in Chicago was going to leave us stranded on the runway for two hours. Two. Hours. Which was actually two and a half hours. No water, no snacks, just stuffy nasty plane on runway for a very long time. By the time we were up in the air, we were sure we weren't going to make our connecting flight to Tulsa, but some miracle was working on our side because when we landed our flight was one of three that had been delayed and was still at the airport. After a series of sprints to make that plane, we were finally, officially, on our way.

Tulsa is a humid place. You would think that after battling New York humidity, I would be prepared for Tulsa humidity, but it was like J said, that every place has a unique type of hot. Specifically, this one was like standing in at the end of a giant hair drier in a damp bathroom. I was also having a hard time knowing I was in Tulsa and also knowing my grandma wasn't there anymore. The city is chock full of my relatives, but everyone congregates around Grandma's house. That's always the first place we go, she's almost always the first relative I see. My cousin and brother picked us up from the airport and we drove to the house, where my parents were staying.

To really understand how much the house really IS my grandma, you have to know that she has been a bed lounger for as long as I can remember. She liked to have the television on, usually to some E! Entertainment celebrity show, and she'd be propped up in bed reading book after book (interspersed with trashy celeb mags). We would always come into her room and lay on the bed to greet her and hang out. She could also be found in the kitchen where she'd be making four desserts at once or a pot of chicken noodle soup. She never learned to drive, and seemed very content to be at her home, receiving guest after guest, feeding everyone and exchanging gossip.

So when we first walked into the house, the scent of it was overpowering. Each house and person has an exact scent that is uniquely their own, and Grandma's house was no different. Only, of course, this would probably be the last time I would smell it. And then there were my parents, and seeing their sadness echoed my own and back and forth, until we were all teary eyed. That first night I couldn't go back to see her bedroom because I was able to hold up some false idea that she was back there and everything was okay. I mean, I knew she wasn't really, but my mind let me play with this trick so that I could deal with things in stages. My parents were working on the program for the memorial service and one of my young cousins had picked out a poem to read. It's a little sentimental for me, and it's not something I would have picked out, but then I was asked to help my cousin read the poem I couldn't say anything except for yes.

I'm sort of a private person with sadness. I've never been one of those big weepers who collapses into others' arms. Feeling sad makes me feel very vulnerable and I get tense and self-conscious about displaying emotion, so reading in front of a big crowd in a heightened state of grief made me feel even more nervous. I decided not to think about it.

The night was good for sharing stories, and we were supposed to send in some memories of Grandma to the minister to read during the service. I was having trouble thinking of a good one, but woke up the next morning with it clear in my head. When I was little, my grandma lived in a house with a room that had a mirrored wall. She took me in there once and had set up another long mirror perpendicular to the big one and instructed me to stand next to it. I closed my eyes, as I was told, and when I opened them, she was standing behind me. She told me to look straight ahead and that she was going to fly. Which she did, rising right off the ground. I was young enough to be dumbstruck, not understanding the trick with the mirrors. She loved it.

Arriving at the funeral home, we all had another wave of sadness hit us, because there was her picture and the flowers and we were definitely definitely at a funeral home and she was gone. The family all gathered in the back and were lead to the front seats together. The first few minutes were the hardest because everyone was still getting used to being there and really dealing with this. And there were some things read and sad music was played. Halfway through the sad music, my young cousin's mother slid over and told me that I'd have to read the poem alone because my cousin couldn't. I looked back and she was collapsed in tears on my uncle's lap and I had to say okay again.

Luckily, I was at least able to preface my reading by noting that it was going to be ironic. And then my uncle was able to come up and tell some very funny stories, that lightened the mood considerably and I think everyone relaxed a little then. The minister read some of the memories, but his printer had gone out on him, so a lot of them were a bit muddled. Like, he read mine, but somehow replaced the word "mirror" with "wall," so my quirky story came out just...really weird and nonsensical, and J and I had to stifle giggles.

Afterwards we did was we do best, and gathered for lots of food. We would continue to do this throughout the weekend, offering each other solace in good food and exchanged stories. We picked out mementos, though I'm not sure we had all resolved that we would never be in the house again in the same way. The objects that reminded us most of Grandma, the gold chain cigarette case or the vanity mirror, were things we couldn't take, and the rest just seemed extra.

J and I flew back yesterday afternoon from Tulsa, stopping--for some ill-planned reason--in Denver before going back to New York. And there, in one afternoon, I hit all the places that meant home to me. Altered homes, but family nonetheless.

Thanks for all your kind words and thoughts; they've meant a lot to me.