I like rain, but does it have to pour?

Way back when my wife was merely my college girlfriend of just a couple of weeks, in the long days of yore (1991), I met the future in-laws pretty much by surprise when they trekked from their home in Idaho for the funeral of her grandfather. A month of two later, I met the grandmother, a spry old widow who, at the time that I first saw her, was climbing into a John Deere tractor to drive it from one relation's farm to another relation's farm. (This, as some of you may know, took place in Iowa farm country.)

Some years later, that spry old lady made it from western Iowa to Western New York -- about a 950 mile trek -- with another old widower named Orville for our wedding, at which she brought the house down at our reception with some pretty vigorous dancing.

Sadly, her health had been in decline over the last two years, with a pretty serious decline commencing over the last couple of months. Yesterday, it ended. She passed away peacefully at the age of 79.

The wife and daughter will be leaving for Iowa tomorrow to attend the funeral; unfortunately, we decided that we couldn't afford for me to miss a week of work, so I will be staying home. (My wife is salaried, so she won't lose a week's pay, but being an hourly employee, I would.) While the idea of five days of having the place to myself is attractive in itself, the manner in which the opportunity arose isn't.

Alas.