Rich's grandmother Maria Soto Reynoso, holding his Uncle Paul in her lap. His dad, Ben is also in this picture and his grandfather, JoseLuis. No one knows who the man with the cane is.
His grandmother didn't like this photo so she scratched out her face.
We have the kids for the weekend while Sharon and Vitaly are in Los Angeles for the Nike Human Race. As soon as I dropped them off at the airport I went back to the house to pick up the kids to take them to our house. Rich had some old photographs of his grandparents. We decided we would take the kids to the cemetery to find the graves.
We drove to Holy Cross Cemetery first since that is in Menlo Park and relatively close. We found the grave of Rich's grandma Julia, and her son Salvador (Uncle Sal).
Then we drove to Palo Alto's Alta Mesa Cemetery to find the graves of Ben and Anita, Rich's parents; Ben junior, Rich's older brother; and Vidal Diaz, Rich's grandfather on his mother's side.
We had to answer many questions about death and dying. At Holy Cross we came across a funeral of a Samoan. All his relatives were at the graveside in traditional dress. They were smiling and laughing and seemed to be quite happy. Ulysses wanted to know why they were not sad. I explained that different cultures view death in different ways. Some people are sad because they have lost a family member but other people are happy that their relative has joined the spirits of the ancestors and will always be close.
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