Good People, A Good Place

I am guilty of knocking the place in which I grew up.  It's not an area that shows much promise.  Business is moving out instead of in.  Many of the shops that I frequented when I was local are vacant.  It seems like the people who live there are content to let it die rather than invest in the potential it has to offer. Being there generally does not fill me with warm fuzzies.

I need to stop. 

While it was not a place where I wanted to raise my children, it was a perfectly good place for my sister and I to grow up... and my parents... and my grandmother.

Over 400 people came through the funeral home this weekend to pay their respects to Grammy and my family.

FOUR HUNDRED

To pay tribute to a housewife from a small little town in The Great White North. She didn't even drive!

But she touched people. Many people.  So did her children.

People came to send her off with their best wishes.

Childhood friends of both of my parents....  My mother's pastor and members of her congregation, even though that is not the church my grandparents attend....  My mother's former coworkers from the place from which she retired 5 years ago....  People who remember my grandmother's kindness when they lost their own parents...  The waitress from my parents' favorite restaurant.

Because it WAS a nice place to grow up... Because the people matter, and if not my grandmother herself, then my parents and my aunts and uncles were more than a name listed in an obituary.  They are friends, coworkers and patrons.

I need to stop knocking the town in which I grew up, even if it's not the place I am choosing to raise my own children.

I come from good people.  I come from a good place.