All of my siblings and also Jill and Hanna drove drove to Idaho Falls from the north, south, east and west through some wintery conditions to celebrate and mourn the passing of my nephew, Tyce John.
On Friday night, we all met at the funeral home to watch Julie and Tristan's community of support come to the viewing. It was touching to watch the baseball community, church community and neighbors come to support them. He looked good - the funeral home did a really good job. Lots of people sent beautiful flowers. Brandon, Tyce's brother, was in charge of setting up some displays that represent Tyce. Julie and Tristan said they wouldn't have brought quite so many things, but they wanted to let Brandon do it. It turned out awesome...hats, bats, awards, hobbies, etc.In Tyce's obituary, they invited anyone coming to the funeral to wear mismatched socks in honor of Tyce, who often wore mismatched socks because he just couldn't be bothered to find a match. It was pretty cool to see so many people, old and young, coming in mismatched socks.
When we watched Tyce's friends come into the room, they were so teary. It was touching.
There was a bouquet of flowers from USU Nursing program - for Creighton. BYU-Idaho also sent a big bouquet, since Tyce was a current student there. He had even gone to class two days before he died.
My Aunt Mary and Aunt Roseanne surprised my mom and came. Roseanne flew to Boise and drove over with Mary.
There was a cute family with a ton of kids all wearing mismatched socks, so I asked if I could take their picture. It turns out that they were neighbor's to Julie in Julie's old house, and the mom is James' Teichert's cousin. When I told her I was from Canada, she said, wait - did your daughter marry a Teichert? I am a Teichert."
Tristan had a neighbor growing up named Jim Craig, whose wife has died so he works at the funeral home for something to do. As soon as he heard about Tyce's death, he text the funeral home director three times to volunteer to go and pick up Tyce's body from Salt Lake. Julie said, he will be in good hands. Then he was helping at the viewing, giving out drinks of water. I talked to him and asked him about it, and he said he wanted to help and also do it for free to help the John family that he loves.
My siblings all saw a few people that we knew from high school, so it was a little reunion.
Some funny moments:
-Sir, I think you are at the wrong viewing. The Beasleys are in the other room.
-Jeanette - I took the red eye flight home from Hawaii and got a red eye. She got sand in her eye and broke some blood vessels, and her eye was sooo red. She wore fake glasses to try and disguise it.
-There was a bouquet of flowers addressed to Brandon from the Tadd Auto Group. We asked Brandon what the connection was, and he said that he had no idea. He hadn't ever bought a car there or worked there. They even looked on the website to see if he knew any of the salesman...just a random act of kindness it seems.
