As everyone knows by now, I was unable to see Grama again—I did visit the next day but she was no longer there. We got a call about mid-morning that she had died. Not unexpected, not even unwelcome as I wrote in the last entry, but still emotional.
After lunch, Mom, Jonathan, and I went to Lawrence and spent two hours at the funeral home, Rumsey-Yost—and that’s even with all the arrangements Mom had already made! Astonishing how much there is to do! Jonathan was fantastic and very well behaved, and good company as well.
Then we went to the nursing home to pack up Grama’s things—mainly just clothes, but a few pictures and letters, some birthday cards that had arrived in the last week. It was strange being there without her. I felt like she’d just stepped out of the room, but I knew she wasn’t coming back. One strange thing is that Jonathan, who knew where he was since he’d just been there for her birthday luncheon, never asked where she was or when we were going to see her. Little kids are amazing sometimes.
On the way back to the farm, five brilliantly white doves/pigeons appeared out of nowhere and flew across the road in front of us. It was like something had been dropped out of a movie; they were so very white. And no, those birds are not native to Kansas. Mom figured they must have escaped from somewhere; maybe someone had gotten married the last weekend and had them released at the going-away ceremony. Anyway, it was a special thing to see.
Grama’s obituary appeared last Thursday in the Houston Chronicle, and it also was in the local Atchison paper as well as the Lawrence Journal World. I originally wrote a much longer one, and Matt (from the funeral home) said he fell over when he got the quote back from the Houston Chronicle—$851!!!!! Good lord. So we dropped the picture and I cut the words down by nearly half, and the total amount was much more reasonable. I look at the obituaries with a whole new appreciation now, and in the last couple of days I have seen some that nearly made me fall off my own chair, knowing what they must have cost (MUCH longer than mine). I also learned that if you want it to sound good, write the whole thing yourself—I did that for the Houston Chronicle one, and it turned out okay, but the others I just gave a bulleted list, and they are a bit more choppy and I think left out some things as well as included some stuff Grama wouldn’t have cared about. Anyway, I suppose that doesn’t really matter. At least there’s nothing inaccurate in them! From a family historian’s viewpoint, that’s very important.
Posted by elizabeth at July 9, 2003 12:20 AM