How does your family handle death?

Comforting thoughts to everyone who has experienced loss lately.

 

Ditto, @Wenders. It's hard to see through the pain, the sadness and the grief right now, but you'll eventually come upon a time and a place where the things she did will be your happiest memories. Say her name out loud every morning. Nobody truly dies if someone is there to remember them.

 

When I was in Kansas for the funeral, my aunt gave me a shoebox. It contained all the cards from when my grandma gave birth to my mom in 1953. There were huge letters in there from family, friends (grandma was a prolific letter writer) and cards from just about every neighbor. My uncle could name them all, and exactly where they lived. He said "no one really knows their neighbors anymore" but back then, every farmstead within a 5 mile radius was known.

 

That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing ... and belated condolences.

 

My two sisters and my brother flew down to Texas this week to wrap up our sister's affairs as best as possible. I've got a variety of mobility problems which made it impractical for me to go -- I'd be more in the way than anything else.
So the three of them went.

In accordance with her wishes, A. was cremated, and we've arranged to have a full funeral service sequence: a vigil, the funeral mass, then graveside committal -- in our hometown in Michigan in three weeks (actually on her birthday).

Todsy in Texas they had the 7:30 Mass (which she often attended) offered for her intention.

We wanted to have a Memorial Rosary for her in Texas. Apparently that's a bigger thing in Latino Catholic practice (we're not Latino but many of her friends there were).

Anyway when we inquired, after arranging for the Mass, the parish informed us we could have a rosary offered at the parish by a parish liturgical minister (priest, deacon, or a nun) for $800.

If we preferred, we could have it at the funeral home (which has done nothing in this process other than the actual cremation and posting the obituary online) for $1000.

The funeral home would consider a rosary as a separate event for billing purposes. The official funeral team sanctioned by the church would ONLY perform a rosary at the church or at the funeral home. Nowhere else.

We made some quick inquiries to people we know who would know, and we asked: is there anything theologically preferable to having a liturgical minister (of whatever rank) say the rosary?

As it turns out, confirming what I remember from my religion classes at St. Sisyphus all those years ago, no, any Catholic in good standing can offer a rosary. The only real difference would be familiarity with the service and comfort level with speaking by the officiant.

In contrast, the mobile home community where A. lived has a community center banquet hall facility for the use of residents at no charge

So my sisters and brother teamed up and led the rosary themselves. (They did fine.) I put the whole program on a PDF up here and emailed it to them as a guide.

About 80 people showed up for the rosary service and a luncheon/reception in the afternoon. The whole thing was livestreamed for relatives.

 

My dad passed away a little more than a month now. He was the one I featured in a post some of you may have seen on another thread about memorable vacations (we went to the Baseball HOF, Basketball HOF and met Red Auerbach on one trip).

He was about two months shy of his 83rd. Sadly, it was self-inflicted. He was dealing with issues with his bones and joints, and it was badly painful for him. From what my mom said, in the middle of the night one night, he went out to the pond in their backyard (it's a 55+ community outside Summerville, SC) and drowned himself. My mom got up during the night for whatever reason, went into the living room and noticed she couldn't hear my dad's CPAP machine going (they had different bedrooms). That's when she found the note my dad left and called the first responders, who eventually found my dad.

I'm glad he is no longer in pain, but a piece of me was angry with what he had to put my mom through. They were married for just shy of 54 years, and this was supposed to be their deserved retirement home. They had moved down there in 2020 (right as COVID shut everything down) after selling our family home of 40 years (we are a family of six, so obviously it was a house that was far beyond their needs with all of us grown).

I got the call from mom on a Monday morning. I was in the parking lot of a local rec center after dropping my 11-year-old son off for his day of summer camp. I let my son enjoy his day of camp, and then my wife and I broke the news to him later that afternoon. He had his tears, but bounced back pretty quickly. It was similar to when we had to take our cat into the vet to put her down.

As for my mom that day, she fortunately has a sister who lives in another Charleston suburb, who spent the rest of the day with her until one of my brothers was able to arrive after flying down from DC. We then went down there the following weekend. I know it was great therapy for her -- she was able to take my son out for their usual "date" of McDonald's, Target and bowling.

Since then, my mom is doing well (she says has her solemn moments), but I can't imagine having to remain in that house, especially when she can look out the windows in the back and see where my dad died. Eventually, I can see her moving back up here to the Atlanta area, where myself and one of my other brothers live. The move from GA to SC was definitely for my dad (even in his obit, it said they moved "to follow his hobbies"). Just don't know when my mom can move, because she has a lot of hoops to go through, especially considering the circumstances of the death.

 

So sorry for your loss, Niets.

 

You have my condolences as well.

 

I’m so very sorry to hear that. Grace and peace to you all, but your mom most especially.

 

Going through our sister's things in Texas, StarSis (the youngest of all of us) found a mint condition Purple Heart which had been awarded to our grandparents in honor of our dad's oldest brother, after he went down in a B-17 on March 15, 1944, outside of Normandy, France.

On the outside of the display case is a note written by our grandmother (who died 6 months before the birth of StarSis), which listed our uncle's actual date of birth, something we'd never been able to find anything anywhere to pin down to a specific date more accurate than the month of August 1924. (Draft cards and other WWII documents only listed month of birth.)

So now we know that our Uncle Jake's actual 100th birthday will be on August 19, 2024. As it turns out, StarSis's oldest son is also named ... Jake.

I'm not much on divine intervention, messages beyond the grave, all that stuff. I don't think our sister conveyed a message from our grandmother, to her youngest granddaughter who she would never meet, about the uncle none of us ever met, to the great grandson who bears his name, so we'll all spare Jake a thought on his 100th birthday.

I don't think that's what happened. But whatever happened, I'm glad it did.