Gretch

The family memorial was very small. Granny, who lives in Sheffield, was there. Tedd came in from Oregon, Aunt Judy from New Orleans, and Aunt Sarah and her son Patrick were there and they live in Florence, Alabama. My mom and dad and John and I drove up from Florida. It was a long weekend and after a month we finally had the chance to all get together and remember Gretchen. She was laid to rest next to my mother. We had a brief service at the church in Sheffield and then we drove out to the cemetary. She was laid to rest next to our mother, as Gretchen wanted it. We each laid a red rose on the box her remains were in and we said our goodbyes. On Thursday, when I was driving to Clewiston, Florida for my Relay For Life Rally it finally hit me we were finally going to bury Gretchen. With her being so far away in Prague, we knew she was gone but it never really hit home until this weekend. We finally had something visible to show us that Gretchen was gone and seeing the tombstone with her name on it next to my moms was very eerie. At the service, my dad had a story that I never remember hearing. Gretch was in 5th grade and she had to write a paper about hydrogen. My dad saw it and she only had a sentence or two. So my dad gave her all sorts of books and said here you go, now you have a lot of information on the paper. She wrote the paper, and it was about a page and half. Her teacher was going to fail her, because she thought there was no way a 5th grader could write this paper. Well when she sat down and talked to Gretchen, Gretchen explained what it all meant. Gretchen knew more than the teacher and the teacher was amazed. Gretchen was always very intelligent and had such potential. She was very well read and I am not a big reader like my dad and Gretch.
I remember when we were growing up, Gretch and I would pick on Tedd. In our house in Louisiana, our bedrooms had a bathroom between them. So if we locked both of our bedroom doors we had our corner of the house to ourselves and we didn't have to leave to go to the bathroom because we had one right there. Gretchen loved the movie Annie and would sing the songs out on the porch in front of the house. One time when we were in Alabama, I took a picture of Gretchen and she was ready to strangle me and she gave you one of those looks of hers. She had the green face mask on and I thought it was hysterical so I had to take a picture of it. My grandparents in Sheffield, Alabama used to live on the top of a huge cliff. On the 4th of July, there would be a barge on the river below and they would shoot the fireworks off from there. Gretchen, Tedd and I had a lemonade and coke stand and we thought it was the greatest thing. Everyone would sit on our grandparents' lawn to see the fireworks and we would have our little stand. Granny said one summer we each made about $60 and we were running through the house saying we were rich.
Gretchen, Tedd and I would spend hours at Aunt Sarah's house in her pool. Gretchen loved floating around on the raft in the pool and Tedd and I loved flipping it over and dumping her in the pool or jumping right by where she was floating to splash her......oohhh she couldn't stand when we did that.
Gretchen always loved her time with her high school buds, her Hooters gang and all of the adventures you guys would go on. It's been great seeing all of the picturs you guys have posted....the parties, the proms, the trips...etc. Dave thanks for all of the pictures you sent my dad. I was sick at the wedding and just wanted to crawl back in bed so my fever would go away and forgot my camera so it was good seeing all of the wedding pictures again. She was so happy and excited that day. It was good to see that she had finally found happiness and was ready to settle down. She always spoke very highly of your family and she loved being an aunt.
I'll always remember the story of you two coming to Sheffield, Alabama for my granddaddy's 80th birthday and the story Gretchen probably told about 1000 times that weekend about the bottle of scotch and the adventure through the airport you guys had with it.