Danielle and I came back from our Grandma Betty's "service" yesterday. There was no service, rather we visited her embalmed body, exchanged comforting platitudes and headed-off (at my aunt and uncle's request) to a casino buffet that Grandma Betty frequented. It was all intermittently awkward and surreal.
My father's side of the family is blue-collar-- none has a college education, and in my father's case, not even a high school education. None seemed particularly interested in talking about anything more abstract than houses and cars; especially cars-- most of them work on cars in one capacity or another (one paints them, another creates custom accessories, another sells tools to mechanics, etc). Also, in contrast to our parenting style, our relatives' kids drink soda throughout the day, and the TV is on constantly. They are not bad people-- to the contrary, they are friendly and generous-- but there is a cultural disconnect between us that is difficult to bridge. As Dani put it, they made her feel like a granola princess. That sums it up pretty well.