Respectfully

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, on Saturday, Motor Man and I took a little day trip. Our destination was an antique mall in South Boston, Virginia.

About a mile before we reached the mall, Motor Man noticed this and pointed it out to me:

And he knew he might as well just make a u-turn right then and there. When we arrived at the ‘scene’, there was a photographer taking pictures using a tripod. So we thought it was some sort of photo shoot. I said to him that this had definitely caught our eye, and he said that it caught his, too. (Turns out, he was also just a passer-by, who stopped to take pictures.)

So I took my not-as-shy-as-I-used-to-be-self over to that dapper young man in the suit and top hat to find out exactly what the situation was.

Meet Joshua. He and his family own a carriage business that also offers funeral services. And they were in the area for a funeral. Following the service, the hearse would lead the procession to this location, where the casket would be loaded into this horse-drawn hearse and transported to the departed’s home (nearby) before continuing on to the cemetery.

The horse’s name is Mellow and he’s a Percheron, and a very patient one, because it was quite a long wait for the procession to arrive from the service.

But it gave us plenty of time to chat with Joshua, his brother and their uncle, and take pictures of Mellow. I learned that Joshua has been riding horses since he was four years old.

I was only able to get a short video of Joshua and Mellow’s part of the procession:

This was all done with the utmost respect, and Motor Man and I were honored to have been there to see it take place.

~These Days Of Mine~