The holidays are coming, and with those come the memories of holidays past, many of which are rooted in childhood. Thanksgiving, for instance, is so much a part of our social consciousness that traditional meals of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, etc., are offered for free for the poor, the homeless, and the lonely--just so they won't miss out. I'm not sure society understands that the food that goes into our bellies cannot replace family connections, but at least our hearts are in the right place.
Christmas is even worse. We just can't stand the notion of our loved ones being alone on Christmas! But it happens, sometimes. The first Christmas after my divorce, my ex somewhat demanded that our daughter be with him and his family on Christmas Day. We had already planned to drive to IL to be with my father for the day, but Meg was already suffering from feeling disjointed from her McNary family, so I changed plans and delivered her to Greencastle--a 30-mile one-way trip-- early in the day. It was my decision to treat myself to a crab leg dinner somewhere that day, in her absence. Never having been on my own for Christmas before, I did not understand that there are NO restaurants of consequence open on December 25th! I ate a hot dog at home. Along about 3:00 PM, my daughter called and asked me to come pick her up. When I said I thought her father was supposed to bring her home, she said, "I thought so, too, but they left for Florida at noon." So much for that!
What I learned from that day was that the celebration of the birth of Jesus needs no calendar date. One does not need to be surrounded by family or eat special food--or even exchange gifts. The hot dog I ate that day was enough, and even though I was angry that my daughter had felt misled and rejected, she still came home to me. And guess what? The next day was December 26th--just another day. I survived unscathed.
I have been invited to go to Florida with my daughter and family this Christmas. I would love to, but circumstances--many of them--just don't feel right to me I've already told my sister that I will be with her for the holiday. Haven't been with them for Christmas at least since my grandchildren were born. In an attempt at a guilt trip, I think, Megan asked me if this were to be my last Christmas on earth, would I rather spend it with my demented brother-in-law, or with her and my grandchildren? That's not the point. I'm not given my "druthers" whether this is my last Christmas or not. If it were, my choice would be to have everyone here, on MY turf, to attend beautiful Christmas Eve services at my church and observe traditions that were changed so many years ago to meet everyone else's needs. As the only single person in the family constellation, I get pushed around a lot. I also get included a lot.
This year, my daughter and grandchildren will spend the holiday in Florida with Denis's parents from Russia, and her father/stepmother. I'm sure they will have a great time! I will spend it with my sister and her family, and we will have a good time, too. And if I die between this Christmas and next, so what? I have endeavored to live my life with no regrets. Christmas will come again. It's just another day!
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Funerals I Have Known
If you don't like to think about sad things, don't read this post. Today, I am talking about funerals.
Funerals are a fact of life. If you have managed, so far in your life, to avoid funerals of close family, God bless you. All of us in my generation, however, are not so fortunate. It happens to everyone as the ancestors die off. We hate to think about it, but it is inevitable. There are no survivors. Sooner or later, all living organisms die. Paying our respects to the dearly departed becomes an obligation more for the living than for the dead. Laying a relative to rest with dignity is a quest that gives us peace with the passing.
This week, my sister and family are experiencing the funeral of her daughter's father-in-law--a man who was loved by many. It has brought back so many memories to me...so many funerals. Many of my memories are bittersweet. It's an exquisite pain. A funeral is generally one of the only times when one can weep unashamedly and not be criticized. I usually tell mourners, "This is as bad as it gets. It will get better." But what do I know? Still, some of the funeral memories last forever. They are important!
The first close family funeral that I experienced was Aunt Sally's. (I think I was in 8th grade.) She was my mother's sister-in-law; her beloved brother's wife. She died young of pancreatic cancer, with a husband (my Uncle Bud) and two teenager daughters surviving. It had been a long fight. She died in Maryland and was shipped back to Illinois for burial in our family's favorite cemetery. We all gathered at my grandparents' farm awaiting my uncle's arrival by car. My grandmother--Uncle Bud's mother--was wheelchair bound and had been for years. As Uncle Bud's car came up the lane, we pushed Baba (our name for "grandma") into the middle of the living room to greet him. When he came in the door, she threw up her arms to her son. He rushed over to her, fell on his knees, put his head in her lap, and they both wept. The rest of us stood off to the side and wept, too. The moment was too personal to interrupt. I will never, ever forget that.
At the funeral home visitation, I stuck close by Uncle Bud to re-introduce him to the people from his childhood who were paying their respects. He appreciated it because he had been through such hell in Aunt Sally's illness that he couldn't have remembered them all.
After the funeral, my sister and I followed the car that held my mother and her sister--Uncle Bud's sisters. We pulled up behind them at the homestead, but they didn't exit the car. We watched Mom's shoulders heave, wondering if she had been overcome by grief. We found out later that her tears were of gratitude. "I'm so proud of my family!" I was gratified.
The next close family funeral was my grandmother's. (I was in my 20s and was divorced.) We called her Baba. She had been in a wheelchair for 15 years after a benign tumor on her spine had done permanent damage to her legs. My family drove down to their place regularly to assist with her care, trying to prevent pressure sores, etc. Baba was pretty badly diabetic by then, and developed pernicious anemia. She would fall into a coma. They would give her a blood transfusion, and she would come around...but eventually, one of her feet became gangrenous (due to diabetes)--a circumstance that her doctors and the family determined not to correct. She was 83. She told my mother to let her go. I knew she was desperately ill and ready for death, but I had an awful time giving her to God.
At her visitation, I was cordial and appreciative of the people who came to pay their respects to my beloved grandmother, who was a respected member of the farm community where they lived. But when it came time for that one last pass by the casket at the end of the evening, I dissolved. "I will miss her so!!"
The time of her funeral was early February and bitter cold. At the end of the ceremony, when it was time to move on, my grandfather (Popo to us) actually had to be led away from the gravesite. He sobbed, "I don't want to leave her here!" God bless the man. He had lived out his vow, "until death do us part"...but he didn't want it to be over, even then.
Popo's funeral was next, 11 years after Baba's. (1985) He was 89 years old. He had a bowel blockage. None of the doctors wanted to do surgery on him because of his advanced age, but he was in such pain that there was no choice. He never emerged from the anesthesia. In a coma for a week or more, he remained alive but unresponsive while his family stood watch.
The night my Popo died, he was in a hospital in my town. His two daughters and spouses had gone out, finally, for a dinner celebration of my parents' anniversary--something they had put off because of his condition. When the hospital nurse couldn't reach my mother, she called me. I called my mother where I knew they were, then headed out to the hospital.
When I arrived, the nurse said, "When I called you, I was going to tell you that Mr. Armstrong had expired, but he seems to have rallied a bit." Of course he did! He was waiting for family to be there! Ten minutes after I arrived, the monitors keeping track of his heart and blood pressure went down and down, until there was nothing left. The priest came in. We said a prayer over my grandfather's body. All I could think of was "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." I felt so honored to be the one chosen to be there for my grandfather's last breath, even though he was totally unresponsive. No one could possibly understand how important that very pale old man on those very white sheets was to a whole family. I was at the elevator to greet his daughters when they arrived. I looked at them and said, "He is gone. He went peacefully." I felt my mother slump in my arms, in gratitude and relief. We all wept for a few seconds, then went in to see him. I had asked the nurse to remove all of his tubes so his daughters could see him naturally, and it worked. My mother, who had been so faithful to her parents' care for so very many years, said, "Oh...that's not so bad."
Popo's funeral had a Masonic bent, led by a family member who fumbled his way through the ceremony. I didn't care. This man would go to Heaven whether the Masons could manage it or not!
My mother's funeral was next, scarely a year later. Now this was a tough one. I can't even go into too many details because her death was so sudden and so deeply felt that I just went numb. She had had a stroke about four weeks before. Was on the rehab floor of the hospital in Streator, IL. It was Thanksgiving time. My ex and I had been fighting, so he had gone to Indiana to be with his family while I had stayed in IL to be with my family. My brother had just left for home to the Chicago area. My sister was on her way home from Missouri after supporting her daughter after the birth of her second child. The bottom fell out, and suddenly Mom was dead. There were only Dad and I, and my 7-year-old daughter to go home to the farmhouse at midnight and wonder what to do next. I made the awful phone calls and tried to console my father. It would be hours before anyone could arrive...my husband, my sister and husband, my brother... It was the longest few hours of my life. The rest is a blur.
On the day of Mom's funeral, one of the funeral directors was in the parking lot at his establishment when we pulled up. One of the Elias brothers. I remember putting my head on his shoulder, saying "I don't think I can do this." His response? "Yes, you can." It was such an Armstrong Woman thing to say that I knew I not only could do it, I had to.
I remember nothing else about Mom's funeral except turning away from the gravesite at the end of the service into the arms of my father-in-law who had tears streaming down his face. I scarcely even knew my in-laws were there. They didn't really know my parents. They had driven the four hours to Illinois from Greencastle, Indiana, and wouldn't even stay for the dinner after the services. All of this just for me. God bless Artie McNary. He may never have known how much it meant to me to see his tears for my pain, but I will never forget it.
My father died in my sister's care in Illinois. The story is complicated. Suffice it to say that my sister and her husband sacrificed quite a lot to be there for Dad. He was in good hands. I think my greatest satisfaction at my father's passing was that we, as a family, had fulfilled a concern that I knew had to be the last thought on my mother's mind as she died: that someone would take care of Dad.
When our brother passed, suddenly, at age 52, it was a huge thing. With our grandparents and parents gone, Doug wanted to preserve the family farm as a monument to family, I guess. He thought he had an ally in our sister, who was the administrator of the farm property...but the whole thing became unwieldy. Over a number of years, the other partners in the farm--my sister, me, and our two cousins--outnumbered him and decided to sell the property to our farmer of many years. Doug was incensed. He divorced his sisters completely.
Doug had never married. He had a child that had been given up for adoption at birth many years before. He was living in a long-term arrangement with a woman who was ONLY a roommate. He would have nothing to do with my sister or me. And then he dropped dead in a store in River Forest, IL, near where he lived. I got an email from police there, asking if I was his sister. (To this day, I don't know how they found me, but they did.) In short order, my sister and I were given the task of burying the brother who had refused to talk to us for at least five years. We scrambled. Shari and I did our dead-level best to bury our brother with dignity and the military honors to which he was entitled. It wasn't easy. We had no access to his records. We did what we could, but I think it was good.
There have been other funerals, of course. I just hope we understand that funerals aren't for the dead, but for the living. Do what you want to do in celebration of the life that is gone. The memories will last forever....
Funerals are a fact of life. If you have managed, so far in your life, to avoid funerals of close family, God bless you. All of us in my generation, however, are not so fortunate. It happens to everyone as the ancestors die off. We hate to think about it, but it is inevitable. There are no survivors. Sooner or later, all living organisms die. Paying our respects to the dearly departed becomes an obligation more for the living than for the dead. Laying a relative to rest with dignity is a quest that gives us peace with the passing.
This week, my sister and family are experiencing the funeral of her daughter's father-in-law--a man who was loved by many. It has brought back so many memories to me...so many funerals. Many of my memories are bittersweet. It's an exquisite pain. A funeral is generally one of the only times when one can weep unashamedly and not be criticized. I usually tell mourners, "This is as bad as it gets. It will get better." But what do I know? Still, some of the funeral memories last forever. They are important!
The first close family funeral that I experienced was Aunt Sally's. (I think I was in 8th grade.) She was my mother's sister-in-law; her beloved brother's wife. She died young of pancreatic cancer, with a husband (my Uncle Bud) and two teenager daughters surviving. It had been a long fight. She died in Maryland and was shipped back to Illinois for burial in our family's favorite cemetery. We all gathered at my grandparents' farm awaiting my uncle's arrival by car. My grandmother--Uncle Bud's mother--was wheelchair bound and had been for years. As Uncle Bud's car came up the lane, we pushed Baba (our name for "grandma") into the middle of the living room to greet him. When he came in the door, she threw up her arms to her son. He rushed over to her, fell on his knees, put his head in her lap, and they both wept. The rest of us stood off to the side and wept, too. The moment was too personal to interrupt. I will never, ever forget that.
At the funeral home visitation, I stuck close by Uncle Bud to re-introduce him to the people from his childhood who were paying their respects. He appreciated it because he had been through such hell in Aunt Sally's illness that he couldn't have remembered them all.
After the funeral, my sister and I followed the car that held my mother and her sister--Uncle Bud's sisters. We pulled up behind them at the homestead, but they didn't exit the car. We watched Mom's shoulders heave, wondering if she had been overcome by grief. We found out later that her tears were of gratitude. "I'm so proud of my family!" I was gratified.
The next close family funeral was my grandmother's. (I was in my 20s and was divorced.) We called her Baba. She had been in a wheelchair for 15 years after a benign tumor on her spine had done permanent damage to her legs. My family drove down to their place regularly to assist with her care, trying to prevent pressure sores, etc. Baba was pretty badly diabetic by then, and developed pernicious anemia. She would fall into a coma. They would give her a blood transfusion, and she would come around...but eventually, one of her feet became gangrenous (due to diabetes)--a circumstance that her doctors and the family determined not to correct. She was 83. She told my mother to let her go. I knew she was desperately ill and ready for death, but I had an awful time giving her to God.
At her visitation, I was cordial and appreciative of the people who came to pay their respects to my beloved grandmother, who was a respected member of the farm community where they lived. But when it came time for that one last pass by the casket at the end of the evening, I dissolved. "I will miss her so!!"
The time of her funeral was early February and bitter cold. At the end of the ceremony, when it was time to move on, my grandfather (Popo to us) actually had to be led away from the gravesite. He sobbed, "I don't want to leave her here!" God bless the man. He had lived out his vow, "until death do us part"...but he didn't want it to be over, even then.
Popo's funeral was next, 11 years after Baba's. (1985) He was 89 years old. He had a bowel blockage. None of the doctors wanted to do surgery on him because of his advanced age, but he was in such pain that there was no choice. He never emerged from the anesthesia. In a coma for a week or more, he remained alive but unresponsive while his family stood watch.
The night my Popo died, he was in a hospital in my town. His two daughters and spouses had gone out, finally, for a dinner celebration of my parents' anniversary--something they had put off because of his condition. When the hospital nurse couldn't reach my mother, she called me. I called my mother where I knew they were, then headed out to the hospital.
When I arrived, the nurse said, "When I called you, I was going to tell you that Mr. Armstrong had expired, but he seems to have rallied a bit." Of course he did! He was waiting for family to be there! Ten minutes after I arrived, the monitors keeping track of his heart and blood pressure went down and down, until there was nothing left. The priest came in. We said a prayer over my grandfather's body. All I could think of was "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." I felt so honored to be the one chosen to be there for my grandfather's last breath, even though he was totally unresponsive. No one could possibly understand how important that very pale old man on those very white sheets was to a whole family. I was at the elevator to greet his daughters when they arrived. I looked at them and said, "He is gone. He went peacefully." I felt my mother slump in my arms, in gratitude and relief. We all wept for a few seconds, then went in to see him. I had asked the nurse to remove all of his tubes so his daughters could see him naturally, and it worked. My mother, who had been so faithful to her parents' care for so very many years, said, "Oh...that's not so bad."
Popo's funeral had a Masonic bent, led by a family member who fumbled his way through the ceremony. I didn't care. This man would go to Heaven whether the Masons could manage it or not!
My mother's funeral was next, scarely a year later. Now this was a tough one. I can't even go into too many details because her death was so sudden and so deeply felt that I just went numb. She had had a stroke about four weeks before. Was on the rehab floor of the hospital in Streator, IL. It was Thanksgiving time. My ex and I had been fighting, so he had gone to Indiana to be with his family while I had stayed in IL to be with my family. My brother had just left for home to the Chicago area. My sister was on her way home from Missouri after supporting her daughter after the birth of her second child. The bottom fell out, and suddenly Mom was dead. There were only Dad and I, and my 7-year-old daughter to go home to the farmhouse at midnight and wonder what to do next. I made the awful phone calls and tried to console my father. It would be hours before anyone could arrive...my husband, my sister and husband, my brother... It was the longest few hours of my life. The rest is a blur.
On the day of Mom's funeral, one of the funeral directors was in the parking lot at his establishment when we pulled up. One of the Elias brothers. I remember putting my head on his shoulder, saying "I don't think I can do this." His response? "Yes, you can." It was such an Armstrong Woman thing to say that I knew I not only could do it, I had to.
I remember nothing else about Mom's funeral except turning away from the gravesite at the end of the service into the arms of my father-in-law who had tears streaming down his face. I scarcely even knew my in-laws were there. They didn't really know my parents. They had driven the four hours to Illinois from Greencastle, Indiana, and wouldn't even stay for the dinner after the services. All of this just for me. God bless Artie McNary. He may never have known how much it meant to me to see his tears for my pain, but I will never forget it.
My father died in my sister's care in Illinois. The story is complicated. Suffice it to say that my sister and her husband sacrificed quite a lot to be there for Dad. He was in good hands. I think my greatest satisfaction at my father's passing was that we, as a family, had fulfilled a concern that I knew had to be the last thought on my mother's mind as she died: that someone would take care of Dad.
When our brother passed, suddenly, at age 52, it was a huge thing. With our grandparents and parents gone, Doug wanted to preserve the family farm as a monument to family, I guess. He thought he had an ally in our sister, who was the administrator of the farm property...but the whole thing became unwieldy. Over a number of years, the other partners in the farm--my sister, me, and our two cousins--outnumbered him and decided to sell the property to our farmer of many years. Doug was incensed. He divorced his sisters completely.
Doug had never married. He had a child that had been given up for adoption at birth many years before. He was living in a long-term arrangement with a woman who was ONLY a roommate. He would have nothing to do with my sister or me. And then he dropped dead in a store in River Forest, IL, near where he lived. I got an email from police there, asking if I was his sister. (To this day, I don't know how they found me, but they did.) In short order, my sister and I were given the task of burying the brother who had refused to talk to us for at least five years. We scrambled. Shari and I did our dead-level best to bury our brother with dignity and the military honors to which he was entitled. It wasn't easy. We had no access to his records. We did what we could, but I think it was good.
There have been other funerals, of course. I just hope we understand that funerals aren't for the dead, but for the living. Do what you want to do in celebration of the life that is gone. The memories will last forever....
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