My son and I went to a funeral yesterday. We went to the funeral of a brigadier general who was a member of our church--although, when we was alive, you would not have known that he was a brigadier general because he never thought of himself as being "all that".
There were two things I was impressed with:
1. The ceremony. I had never been to a military funeral before, and I was impressed with the ceremony shown there. They had a guard on the casket and they had several soldiers there as well. 2. My son's behavior. I had never taken Matthew to a funeral before and I did not know how he would handle it. I did take my iPod so he would have something to keep him busy. He behaved QUITE well and I told him that I was VERY proud of him. (For those of you who don't know, my son has autism.) One of the reasons I wanted to come was that one of the man's daughters has been Matthew's "helper" for many years. When we saw her in the foyer, she took Matthew over to meet her in-laws. Both daughters spoke, and after Matthew's "helper" spoke, Matthew stood up and started to clap. I pulled him back down and said, "You can tell her that she did a good job later." :-)
But just to show that he had his priorities straight--I was telling him afterwards about the man being a soldier . . .and Matthew's answer was, "I want my French fries!" I had told him we were going to go out to lunch afterwards. :-)
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