CathInfo.com

I have heard of doves released for weddings but now funerals.  

Hmm, I did a quick search and found instead of a 21 gun salute for veterans they can release 21 doves.    Those poor doves!

Where's PETA??

If my father had been in different circuмstances --- if we had been in different circuмstances --- I would have been overjoyed to arrange for my father to have a military funeral with a gun salute.  (Not sure how many, if any, guns that a Private First Class would get.  He served honorably at an Army hospital as a medic for two years.  It was the 1950s.)  As I told the morticians as they carried my father out of the house and down the driveway with a flag covering him, my father signed the very same blank check, that everyone else who serves, signs.

As it stood, and I'd rather be spare of words about this, it was just a private graveside service.  That's what he wanted.  To tell the truth, he didn't even want as much as he got, but I could not bear to think of him just being put away in a crypt without any words or prayers being said.  As I told my mother, it's not for him, it's for me.

Funny thing, I just realized that my father's final resting place is near a free public gun range.  He would like "free".  Next time I go visit him, if I don't have to return to care for my mother for awhile --- she's pretty independent, it has amazed me how she has adjusted to life alone, I check on her at least twice a day, and my son has been staying with her the past few nights, TBH he's a little put out with me right now, and neither he nor Grandma can do any wrong in one another's eyes, they're thick as thieves --- I'll have to stop and send a few rounds downrange.  "Oh, I just took the long way home, it's a nice day, I felt like a little drive..." (that is no lie, I do have to drive a little out of my way, and take the country road home).  My mother admits the necessity of guns for home defense, and of proficiency in them, she just doesn't like to hear about it.  It's a generational and a gender thing.