February 4, 2003
3pm

I have been putting off people for a couple of days now on all that happened during my trip.  I feel bad for that, but I'm really still processing as I write this and I wasn't sure if I could get through it more than once.  There is so much to cover and my mind is really still racing from it all.  Mostly, I'm just tired.  Waaay down in my bones tired.  I don't think I've ever experienced anything quite so draining.

When I look back on the last week, the main impression I had is that it all went so fast.  I thought mom was going to pull out of it this time and in the end, she didn't.  The whole thing was very dramatic and nerve wracking.  She was getting better, then she wasn't, then the family decided to take her off the respirator, then another part of the family felt it was too soon.  She died at 6pm on Monday the 27th.  I was starting to get a little wigged out, so I called my friend Patricia and she soothed me back down again.  While I was talking to her, I noticed two weird things.  One was that the candle that had been burning all weekend for mom's health was out and the other was that I now had about 5 lilies coming into full bloom.

I had gotten somewhat comfortable with the idea of not going, but then Sage flew into action and thanks to the help of a number of EOS readers, I was soon kissing Eric and the babies goodbye and easing off the runway toward Kentucky. 

All four of my flights (two there and two back), were flawless.  I'd always heard Delta stood for Don't Even Leave The Airport, but it was fabulous.  For the first three of the four flights, I sat in the row alone and one the way back, I was seated in the row with a cute guy and a seat between us.  My luggage was always where it was supposed to be.  I had some breakage on the way home, mostly picture frame glass that I didn't pack well enough.

When I got to Evansville, Indiana (one of the most confusing towns on the map), my friend, Charlene met me at the airport to lead me out of the labyrinth of streets.  It was great to see her.  I went to grade school with her and hadn't seen her since middle school.  We hit it off again as though there had never been a break.  She's a very successful psychologist in Kentucky and has helped more people than most of us will ever know in our lives.  She introduced me to her friend, Susan, and we grabbed a bite before sleeping.

Of course, the second I got there, I started my period early and had to contend with that.  It's weird how in times like this something so small can seem like such a hassle.

The next morning, I drove out to my Aunt Betty and Uncle Delmar's and met my brother there.  It was uncanny how much things were the same.  In town, I couldn't have found my way around to save my life, but once I was out of the city, almost nothing was changed.  It was great to see my aunt and uncle again, who were like a second set of parents to me.  Ed looked great and my sister-in-law, Caryn, is every bit as wonderful as I knew she would be.  We talked about some of the legal issues, such as my mom's will being nowhere to be found and worked through some of the necessaries like that. 

I hadn't planned on going to the viewings.  I was adamantly opposed to having viewings, part of my rejection of Westernized mourning.  The whole "staying up with the dead" thing has always seemed a little twisted to me.  I told Eric on the way to the airport that if I die and he's with me, kiss my cheek when I flatline, then send me off to the morgue to be incinerated.  Take my best picture, have it enlarged and then have a memorial service (NOT a funeral) where people talk about how cool I was.  Having people parade past my dead (destined to be a fugly dead person here) carcass, murmuring about how "natural" I look isn't how I want to do it. 

After I finished talking to my aunt and uncle and brother, I flew down 231 to Beaver Dam to the best Pizza Hut in the world, where my pal, Sandy, from high school and I exchanged O Brother movie lines and laughed like baboons for about an hour and a half.  After our visit, I went to the funeral home, determined that I wasn't going to look at her.  I got talked into seeing my dad in his casket and now when I think of him, I think of that first and then have to work around that to get to the good stuff.  I didn't want that to happen with my mom.  Fortunately, there was always someone in front of the casket if I was within the danger zone (she was riding low in the casket).  Actually, I made it through the entire time seeing nothing more than the top of her hair and the rims of her glasses.  I saw a bit of her hands, but they looked weirdly unnatural, so I looked away quickly enough.

I'd been in the funeral home for literally about 30 seconds when the director came up and asked me if I was Kathy (which I was until 1994) and told me I had a phone call.  It turned out to be my ex-father-in-law, who I'd never expected to hear from again.  He wanted me to come out to visit, but that was one of the many things I wanted to do and didn't get to.  All that afternoon and on to 8pm, then for the next morning, I got to see people that I love dearly and hadn't seen for 10, 20 or 30 years.  I saw my Uncle Joe, for whom my son Joey was name, his wife, Aunt Zula (who is fabulous) and their daughter Nancy, who I worshiped and always thought looked like Patty Duke.  Their son David (who my second son was named for) couldn't make it.  They live in Alabama.  All of my mother's living siblings were there as well as lots of friends of the family from over the years.  I worked hard to try and keep things light, interjecting lots of humor and fun memories into the events, which is how my mother would have wanted it.  The aunts, her sisters, had a terrible time of it.  One aunt had lost her husband on January 27th of last year and mom on the same date this year.  Her twin sister, Sue, was destroyed.  Mom's little sisters, Betty and Patsy, were also really torn up.  I made the mistake of asking my Uncle Jimmy how his son, John, was doing (he was a couple of years older than I was), only to find he'd died and I didn't know it.  That made me realize how vulnerable I am now to never knowing anything that happens in the family again.

My brother was on good behavior, Allen, not Eddie.  Allen has a tendency to be very sarcastic, rude and nasty and I was a little worried about how he was going to deal with things.  We were all really excited on Saturday when his ex-wife brought their children to the funeral home.  They are about 8 and 12, I'm guessing and he hadn't seen them in a long, long time.    That definitely made his day.

One of the things that pleased me most was that the first words out of the mouth of almost everyone I met were "do you have e-mail?"  Most of the aunts and uncles don't, but millions of friends and cousins do.  It was really, really great to see everyone.  We got finished with the first day of viewing at 8pm and then I took off with Delena (not my daughter, the cousin who my daughter was named for) and we grabbed some Mexican food and went back to where she lives.  We had a nice night together, but she had to work the next day (single mom, works 7 days a week), so she turned in early and I wrote mom's eulogy. I had about 15 pages of notes I'd made on the plane and sadly, Delena's computer wasn't communicating with her printer, so I had to hand write the damned thing in my journal, which is fortunately, a really hot looking leather bound book.  I'd forgotten what writers' cramp felt like (leaning more toward the more technologically appropriate carpal tunnel syndrome).  I finished up late and crawled into bed, asleep before I hit the pillow.  Next morning was funeral day.  I woke up alone in the house since Delena was already at work and Brandon (her son) was spending the night at his grandmother's.  It was really strange to be alone.  (Not bad at all and I was pleased to find that I do still enjoy my own company).

I went to the funeral home around 10am, which was when I was surprised to find Allen's ex there with his children.  We eased through the day, meeting and greeting, then the funeral was at 1pm.  I wasn't particularly impressed with the minister they chose.  He was a friend of my uncle's and never knew my mother at all.  My mother was Christian and the sermon he chose was the usual exclusionary stuff that was what caused me to leave the church in the first place.  I looked for the things in what he was saying that I could value and ignored the things I found offensive.  I did a good job with the eulogy and everyone seemed comfortable with what I had to say.  I particularly wanted to be the one to speak about my mother because with my father's funeral, the only thing the minister could say personally about my father was "Guy was an intense man."  WTF?  I definitely didn't want to take that chance with mom. 

One thing that was really cool was my cousin, Rusty, who was the vocalist.  His first song, "Sitting at the Feet of Jesus" (I *love* gospel music) didn't really do much for him and called for him to have a higher scale vocal range and gave a kind of Ethel Merman effect.  The next song, however, was "Peace in the Valley," and as a gal of the 60's, I have to say if I closed my eyes, it was Da King up there and I kept waiting for him to really cut loose with it.  His closing song was called "Come On In" and it got me boo hooing a bit.

After the funeral, we were all getting into the limo and no one could find my brother >:< Allen, so we had to wait around forever for him.  Finally, we were on our way to the cemetery.  We noticed that while people in town did not pull over for the funeral procession, once we were out of the city, people suddenly remembered they were raised right.  My mom had already purchased her own plot and had told me that she had my dad on one side of the grave yard, Grover, her second husband on the other side and her own plot in the middle.  As it turned out, that was evidently not the case.  My aunt told me that Mom was being buried next to Grover (which made since because she bought her plot right after she buried him).  It wasn't a problem, it was just different than what she told me.  We went into the little tent, the preacher expounded a bit more on how being a Christian was all that mattered and then it was over.  I thought there would be a flinging of dirt onto the lowered casket, etc, but I guess it's lowered after everyone leaves.  While we were in the cemetery still, I noticed that Mom's grave was where it was and I wondered where Grover was.  Turns out, we were SITTING ON HIM during the tent part of the ceremony.  (?!)  As it turns out, my dad has a stone from the VA, but mom, Grover and my grandfather are without stones. 

This is my father's stone.  My sister-in-law, Caryn, brought me a piece of marble and told me it was part of his stone and gave it to me.  Evidently, it had broken away at some point and she dug it out of the ground.

This is my pappaw's grass.  Since he doesn't have a stone (something I plan to correct soon), I took a picture of his grass.

We rode back to the funeral home and everyone wanted to eat together, so we had (more) cold ham sandwiches.  We ran out of drinks, so I jumped at the chance to get out of there, went to the store, got drinks, then drove through Dairy Queen and got a REAL brazier burger. Ahhh.  Hot food at last.  Every time I was ready to leave the funeral home, something else came up so that I had to stay.  Situations came around so that I had to go out to Livermore (Rachel, I waved at you) to my mother's apartment and get some other things, which sucked because I really wanted to go see my friend Linda, who I'd only got to briefly see at the funeral home on Friday.  Delena and I went back out to her house and she, Brandon and I went out to the apartment.

My mom is, if nothing else, an avid collector of junk.  We got things squared away there, stopped at Geno's for pizza, then headed home.  Poor Delena had to work AGAIN, so Brandon and I stayed up, talked and had fun.  He's a really, really great kid (14).  Because of some things that happened at my mom's apartment, he and I were both really spooked, so he ended up sleeping in Delena's room and I was on the couch instead of in the guest room.  I averaged about 4-5 hours of sleep each night I was there.

Got up the next morning, woke up Brandon and we took off to get some pictures.  This is my grade school:

Pleasant Ridge Elementary, which used to be Pleasant Ridge High School long ago.  Six grades of children went here with each grade having about 20-25 kids enrolled.  This is the back, which was a gym and bathroom (1 for girls and 1 for boys in the whole school with a teacher's stall in the girls' bathroom):

Just down from my school is my grandparents' house.  They lived there less than a year.  Grandma tended to get a house to keep her stuff in and then would live in town in an apartment.

It's pretty much an oversized planter now.  Weird.

Much weirder is 2 miles further to the south where my family home is where I grew up.  It looked like this in 1978 when I left home:

It now looks like this:

To the right is the back yard.

I had a wonderful smile when I saw this:

If you read our spooky stories, this road will mean something to you.  It was the dirt road down which my friend, Susie Dame, lived where her dad Woody thought he ran over the Lady on the Road.  What was a dirt road is now "Dame Drive!"  I also got to see Susie and her mom and brother for the first time since I left home!  That was fantastic!

Brandon and I then went up to Mt Carmel church to see his sister's grave.  Natalie died in 1998 when she was 12 of leukemia.  It was really, really hard for all of us.

As I was telling my brother good-bye, they gave me mom's antique dishes I'd inherited, two boxes worth.  My suitcases were filled to bursting already, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but when (talk about last minute brainstorming) I saw Charlene to go back to the airport at 11:30am, she said she'd box them up and send them out to me.  I pushed her some money for packing and shipping and before I knew it, I was back on the plane and it was all over.

The flight home was good.  I paid for a movie I slept through and things were uneventful.  It was great to see the kids, but I've been really fragmented and tired since I got back and have trouble putting two words together in speaking, much less writing.  Nathan has been reeeeeally whiney since I returned and somehow, in the few days I was gone, I lost my immunity to it and it feels like razor blades are skating up my spine.

I am sure that as days go by, I'll find a better way to sort all of this, but for now, it's still a jumble.  I just wanted to touch base with all of you and tell you how much these two people:

(me and my brother, Ed) really appreciate all of the love, support and string pulling people did to get me back there for my mother's funeral.  There is absolutely no way we could have done it without the help of friends and strangers and it meant all the world to us.  Thank you.

As I said before, I feel out of sorts still and I'm sure I'll be back on track again soon.  It was an interesting trek to be back home again after 8 years and it meant everything to me.

Love Always,