My brother and sister in law asked me a few questions about what I wanted for her funeral. They had a visitation in their city, expecting a few hundred people from his church that my mother attended maybe 10 times. We had about 25 people show up, and most of them were from my city who came to support me. We then took my mother to Louisville, Ky for one night of visitation and then burial the next morning. My sister in law and brother insisted on a no frills ceremony at the grave site. I wasn't fully aware obviously of what this entailed. We had lots relatives, mostly cousins, and my mother's brother came to both visitation and burial. I had several childhood friends, old church folks come to see us. My ex brother in law came and because he had a grudge with my daughter, accosted her at the casket. We were standing there with his wife, my ex's sister and another sister, when he decided to make a rude comment about Cody not coming to a family wedding. Evidently he called her a snotty bitch and if I had heard it, he would have been knocked out. He has since passed in a horrible undignified manner and I believe I hear karma knocking at his door. We had a long time friend of my brother's speak, who loved my parents as his own. He was eloquent and concise. We had music played and then we proceeded to the burial site. There wasn't any green grass laid down, the lift that lowers your loved one into the ground wasn't there, NO FRILLS was NO FRILLS. I was horrified. They had said no service at the grave and I understood that, but we did say a prayer, and then i watched as my mother's casket was strapped and just whoosed down into the hole. I can honestly say this makes the burial a horrific event. My daughter has been traumatized about this, and it is something you can never UNSEE. My poor mother had more than enough money to pay for a lift and a decent decent into the ground. These are hard things for me to reconcile, when I took such good care of her.
We received a furniture deliver of things they didn't want. Her bed of course was ruined because they chopped the legs off, they sent us stuff back and honestly could be thrown in the garbage, but they loaded it onto the truck and sent it. We have her vanity and stool. I have her silver and her jewelry which doesn't amount to much more than costume jewelry. After 3 years I have begun going through 2 boxes of things I dumped quickly when she had to move in a weekend and it was things in her dresser. I found a little blue bowl with some dice and a few black/white marbles from a game and was about to pitch all the contents, when I spied something gold in the bottom of the bowl. I believe I have found my father's wedding ring, if not I don't know who it belongs too, it is big enough to fit around my thumb and could only be his, but I thought when he was buried my mother buried it with him.
It has taken me 3 years to write this part and I still can see my mother being dumped into the ground like a log.
Dementia still impacts my life, my daughter holds on to everything that was my mothers, wants a tattoo of cardinals representing her pawpaw and nana. I don't like it but eventually she will do what she wants. Her grandparents would be so proud of her graduating from college this December and would have lovingly gone to her ceremony. I miss you mother and I am glad your suffering is over, but I didn't like how you ended your time with us.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
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