the circle of life turned

Our world got a little smaller last Saturday morning. If you’ve been reading here since before covid you likely remember me talking about our glass blowing friends Kathy Poeppel and Dick Moiel and how every November was spent getting organized and working out my display for the open house they sponsored at their studio the first weekend of December. It is with great sadness that I report Dick passed away peacefully last Saturday morning at home. His health had been deteriorating for the past several years and his bout with aspirated pneumonia a few months ago depleted his already tenuous strength. 

We first met Dick and Kathy one year when they called the studio and asked if they could come visit. That was sometime in the mid 90s I think after we had started doing personal work in the pate de verre cast glass technique (the whole precise timeline is lost to the past). Dick, a neurosurgeon, and Kathy, his surgical assistant, had retired to reduce the stress in their lives and were looking for a new activity to fill their days. They were avid art collectors with a focus on glass art and were visiting the few art glass studios in town. They took their first glass blowing class in 1994 and built their glass blowing studio in 1995, Houston Studio Glass. We started getting a postcard in November about a glass blowing open house in December. Who the hell is this and tossed it aside. Maybe the third time we decided to check it out. When we walked in Kathy was demonstrating and Dick was explaining what she was doing to the crowd and when he saw us he stopped and introduced us to the audience as fellow glass artists. We stayed a short while and then left. In the year 2000, Dick called and invited us to participate in a hot glass casting workshop by an artist from New Orleans he and Kathy were sponsoring at their studio, inviting not just us but non glass artists whom they knew as well. It was a fun three days and that was really the beginning of our friendship with Dick and Kathy. As art collectors they participated in the Houston art scene, inviting visiting artists to stay with them, gave dinner parties, had visiting glass artists give demonstrations at their studio and included us in these events and so we started to become known locally; inviting us and other budding glass artists in Houston to participate in their open house every year. While we had a gallery in Houston and Oliver sold a lot of work for us, it was Dick and Kathy who, as Marc put it, made us popular. My joke was that they dragged us kicking and screaming out of our cave and into the light.

They were big promoters of glass art, took classes and workshops every summer at all the prestigious glass and craft schools; Pilchuck, Penland, the Corning Museum of Glass to name a few, and then worked in their studio in the fall and winter perfecting the skills they learned over the summer and were friends with many of the big names in glass art. On a state level Dick worked to arrange exhibitions showing their work and the work of the local glass community in which we were included.

The last open house was the first weekend in December 2019 and then covid shut everything down for two years. Dick started having health problems though not from covid and they worked in the studio less and less. We last saw Dick and Kathy in November. He was looking a bit frail but in good spirits. Dick went on hospice care Tuesday, September 9th at home and took his last breath the following Saturday in his 90th year. 

We owe Dick a lot, not only for his friendship but for his generous support and all the work he did to promote not only his and Kathy's work but our work and that of other local glass artists as well.

Fly high Dick. You will be missed.

 

a year, a busy day, a boob squishing

Wednesday, the 13th was a year since my sister’s death. I was awake in the wee hours right about the time her heart stopped. Hard to believe it’s been a year already. Robin brought me these pretty lilies.

I made a key lime pie last weekend. 

Well, just a regular lime pie since I didn’t use key lime juice. I’m going to make a chocolate fudge pecan pie next week. Mary Moon has inspired me so I dug out my Aunt Mimi’s recipe.

As usual I’m out of pocket on Thursdays since I have to leave early to get to Share then take the cardboard to the recycling container and then lunch and walk the dog and feed the outdoor kitties and then get ready for yoga and then go to yoga. No time for reading or writing blogs and Friday was busy too. 

Thursday was a madhouse at SHARE, not just with food orders but clothing, diapers, housewares, blankets, whatever they need that we have to give, and sorting through and putting away the donations that come in. Every year Jan orders turkeys from the food bank to give out the Thursday before Thanksgiving and two of the churches made up and delivered bags with other stuff with which to make a Thanksgiving meal (don’t know exactly what because I had not one minute to look and see what was in them). The turkeys and bags are first come first serve for those that are eligible for the full service food order which people can only get once every three months. When I got there at 9 the little area where people wait to be interviewed was already packed. Last I heard the sign-in list had 45 names. I have no idea how many food orders we filled because I never left my station except to get stuff from the back storeroom if there was no one not busy to get it for me. We started with 32 turkeys and at some point Jan left to buy more though I’m not sure how many, over a dozen certainly, and we still ran out before the last few food orders. Word must have gone out that we were giving away free turkeys because we had a number of people pull up to the back where we load cars asking for the free turkey. Nope, sorry, doesn’t work that way, you have to qualify at the front. Anyway, the ladies up front usually lock the door at 12:30 to give us enough time to be done with everyone by 1 pm when we officially close. And so they did yesterday but there were still enough people waiting that we didn’t fill the last few food orders until 1:30 and Jan and Patti helped with those. And then I flew out of there.

My PC doctor had ordered a mammogram and an ultrasound on my left boob because I’ve had a persistent sore spot there. Isn’t sore every day but when it is it’s always in the same spot. She did a hands on exam. Do you feel anything I asked, maybe she replied. She didn’t seemed all that concerned, relieved my fears of cancer saying cancer doesn’t cause pain (well until it’s so far advanced you’re dying and why it’s called the silent killer) but she ordered the tests to check things out. The imaging center is in Sugar Land about 30 minutes away with clear traffic and still have to find a parking spot and they always want you there early so I had made the appointment for 2:30 Thursday afternoon thinking I would have plenty of time after SHARE closed to get there. I did get there in time and after a half hour or so after I checked in, a tech came out to tell us in the waiting room that their entire computer system had gone down and they didn’t know when it would come back up but they were working on it and there was nothing they could do until it came back up. I waited about 40 minutes and then left, they would call me to reschedule when the system came back online. I hadn’t been home long when they called to reschedule and fortunately they could get me in at 1:30 Friday. I’m happy to say both tests were clean, no evidence of cancer or anything else I should worry about, so yay!, but the doctor who came in to talk to me had no real explanation for the sore spot. Could be hormones even this far after menopause or transferred pain. I have had a lot of tinkering done this year. And I notice it less as time goes on. 

I used the bathroom there in the waiting room before I left and this sign was on the inside of the door.

Who sticks their hand down the toilet in a medical facility?

purging a life and laying it to rest

We had left Pam’s house pretty much intact after she died, too grief stricken to deal with it all and my granddaughter Robin was moving in anyway to care for the house and the cats. My niece, Denny, my sister’s older daughter, had been coming three or four times a year to spend two weeks with her mom the last three years of Pams life and so since this was probably the last time she would come to Wharton Denny and her husband came in from Albuquerque Tuesday late afternoon to finally deal with all her mother’s things before the family gathered again on Saturday to take Pam’s ashes to the beach and lay them to rest. 

My sister was a collector though she was no longer actively collecting and did winnow out some stuff when she moved across the street because she had to, moving into a smaller place, but that house was crammed full. Every square inch of wall space, cabinet space, shelf space, available floor space was covered. My niece just described her as an organized hoarder, an apt description, because my sister was very organized. 

She collected a set of dishes for every one of her six grandchildren but sent them to the individuals while she was downsizing before she moved here. I’ve already gone through the christmas ornaments but I don’t really consider them a collection. What she had collections of were plates, dolls, teapots, dragons, cookbooks, books, goddess figures, Royal Doulton figurines, seashells omg the seashells, antique costume jewelry, clocks, an outfit of clothing from every decade (this was started by our mother) but those have been gone and I don’t know when she stopped keeping them, tarot cards, and this doesn’t even include her craft and cross stitch supplies. Besides the cross stitch pieces that she had made into pillows or framed, there were 23 finished works in a drawer.

I always called Pam the family historian because she knew everything about not just our family growing up but our parents as well. She is who I would ask whenever I had a question about things that happened and when they happened when we were kids. One of her many hobbies was genealogy and she pushed some of our lines back to the 900s. I forget how many binders she had of that, how many different lines radiating back into the past. Her younger daughter took those. She had boxes of bundles of letters from as far back as a paternal great aunt and uncle and our parents and god only knows who all. So much history and we did not delve into any of it. It was just all so overwhelming. She had a binder of stories of her own life that she had written down. Her oldest granddaughter asked for those. And albums of pictures, so many albums of pictures of generations of ancestors and her own generation and her kids and grandkids. I didn’t want any of that stuff, my brother didn’t want it, neither did her kids or grandkids. Who has the space to keep all that stuff? Who has the time or interest to research and ask over and over if some institution wanted it for archives? None of us in the moment though it's possible some of us down the line may regret that that stuff wasn't saved.

Wednesday we cleared out the small extra bedroom/craft room and most of her office. The hall was lined with boxes overflowing with stuff to take to the charity shop and three extra large bags of trash. Thursday first thing we took the first load to the charity shop and then we finished the office and did the living room and kitchen/dining space ending up with another load of boxes. And Friday morning, those went to the charity shop and then we did the master bedroom and the last few boxes went to the charity shop with two more large bags of trash and other stuff went to the burn pile. We finally finished early afternoon. Things that family indicated they wanted but didn’t take when they were here when she died we put in boxes with their names on them. My niece was intent on clearing out the house and she was brutal. Me too I guess. We had only a few days before everyone converged again on Saturday. 

And so people started arriving from Washington state, Virginia, Ohio, from Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Goliad, Houston; 22 of us and 1 boyfriend, four generations. It had been raining earlier in the day, in fact has rained nearly every day since the hurricane three weeks ago, was sprinkling when we left at noon for the beach at Matagorda, an hour’s drive away, but we were doing this rain or not. As it happened, it did stop raining and had even begun to show a few breaks in the cloud cover by the time we got there and we made our way from the pavilion at the end of the river road to the edge of the water. Because it is nearly always windy, I had brought a shovel and Pam’s step-son Michael dug a shallow trench just above the waterline and we took turns spreading her ashes in the trench. We had filled a box with all the small shells she has collected over her lifetime 

adding some of those, the rest we threw back into the gulf to be washed ashore again over time. Her younger daughter Shannon’s husband had picked a basket of flowers from their garden and those also went in the trench over her ashes. We stayed for a while as water slowly seeped into the trench and then as we turned to leave a wave came in just far enough to finally fill it and mingle her ashes with the sand and the salt water she so dearly loved.

We returned to our cars and headed to the restaurant at the harbor that had a table waiting to accommodate all of us for one last meal together before we all went our separate ways. Later my brother and I were marveling about how big our family had become from just the three of us siblings; thirty of us counting the ones out of state that couldn’t come…spouses, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. 

recovery of one kind and another and another

I found this blooming in the ditch this morning totally out of season.

Today it is seven days counting the day of my surgery. The incision is still ugly but healing, the bruise is fading, what’s left turning yellow and brown. Yesterday I picked up the rest of the debris, all small stuff, in the little backyard adding to the big pile there. This morning when I let the dog out I cleared the front yard making a small pile on edge of the street. The county is supposed to be coming around and picking up storm debris starting tomorrow. I’d like to move some of the piles around here to the street before they get to our neighborhood but it probably won’t happen because I’m still being very conservative in my activity. Maybe the small one on the side yard, maybe the small one in the front yard but the monster in the side yard and the one in the little backyard will take much longer to move. And of course, the big backyard hasn’t even been touched. I tried to torch the burn pile yesterday but with all the rain we’ve been having it wouldn’t catch. Maybe Monday as long as the rain holds off. Unfortunately, it’s forecast to rain every day next week.

Yesterday Marc drove me down the county road I take to get to the grocery store. There were five enormous, 50 year old at least, pecan trees down, keeled over uprooted, just on that short stretch alone. I’m still astounded by how much damage that category 1 hurricane did.

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My sister’s sudden and completely unexpected death had a profound impact on me beyond just the loss of my best friend and main companion other than my husband. It really just took the wind out of my sails and, in retrospect, made me hyper sensitive to my own mortality which I see as the core cause of all the medical stuff I’ve been going through the last two months. Instead of recognizing an intense afib episode for what it was, I basically panicked which sent me to the ER which led to all those tests which led to the false aneurysm diagnosis and everything that followed that. Really, the only procedure I needed was the afib ablation because the medication was no longer controlling it. How many years have I taken off my life as a result of two months of panic, all that anesthesia?

It impacted me in other ways too. In my grief I lost all motivation to do anything creative. The broken water pipe at the studio has been fixed but I still haven’t bothered to get Marc to go over and turn the valve back on (I can’t get it to budge), I put away my colored pencils, sketchbook, and watercolors. I have the fabric to make a new skirt but haven’t gotten my sewing machine out, I bought all those new crystals and still haven’t hung them. Gardening, yoga, and SHARE have been my only activities and it’s too hot to garden now even if I wasn’t still recovering from all those procedures.

Well, one of my readers, David, has, unintentionally I’m sure, kicked me in the butt. I’m going to get my colored pencils, sketchbook, and watercolors and paper out and put them on the small work table. That may be as far as I get today but it’s a step forward.

Tuesday my niece and her husband will arrive. Our plan is to go through Pam’s old house and start clearing away some of the stuff. Nothing has been gotten rid of at this point and it’s time to pack up her life. The furniture will stay except for two pieces that have no real value, just taking up space in an overcrowded house. Next Saturday all the family will gather once again to scatter her ashes as she requested and when that is done I think I will be able to finally let her go. I need to start making again.

 

not dead yet

Yesterday was my 74th trip around the sun. We went to a Mexican restaurant for a late lunch and margaritas and I was so full that the stuffed feeling didn’t start to abate til about 8 PM and I have left overs for lunch today. I got text messages from two of my granddaughters, a long phone call from my son, and a visit from my daughter who came bearing a gift of three fancy desserts, none of which I sampled last night because see above.

I told Marc during lunch that I think I’m more freaked out about being in the mid 70s than I think I will be when I hit my 80s (positive thinking here kids, putting out in the universe what I desire). The reason being that people start dying in their 70s; my sister who was active, self sufficient, and basically healthy being a perfect example since she keeled over dead at 76 last year. So I looked up some statistics.

According to the Social Security actuarial tables, a female (me) who was 60 in 2015 will live to be 84, 70 in 2015 will live to be 86. I was 65 in 2015 so I should expect to live until I’m 85 at least. But then my sister, older by 3 years died at 76, almost a decade less than the expectation. Here’s another statistic, more than 20% of people will die before they are 70 while almost 60% will live past 80. In 2020 the average age of death in the US was 73.7. At 74 I’ve passed that milestone if only just barely. World wide the biggest cause of death is cardiovascular disease (what killed my sister) followed by cancer, respiratory diseases (in 2021 in the US that was covid specifically) and fourth, various dementias.

In my youth and hallucinatory drug days and later delving into metaphysics and Theosophy and Jung and even the ridiculed New Age stuff, I came to understand that all is one and one is all, that death of the physical body was not necessarily the death of consciousness, that death is really only birth in reverse when we shed the physical body we took on when we were born, that our consciousness cycles through what we think of as reality as independent beings and being absorbed into the All That Is; that past, present, and future are all happening simultaneously. Research and speculations coming out from quantum physics seems to support these notions. 

The upshot is that I’m not afraid of death, but I’m not ready for it either. That’s where the fear and anxiety comes in, that it will happen suddenly like it did for Pam. I saw her one day and she was happy and healthy and the next I found her basically dead on the ground from a massive stroke.  

She had had a heart attack at 50 and at least two TIAs that I’m aware of, one a year or so after her heart attack and one in the year of her death though I think she had at least two others last year, judging from observation, that she wouldn’t admit to because she didn’t want to go to the neurologist and go through all the tests because she was seriously claustrophobic. While I have not had a heart attack or any vascular blockages or mini-strokes, I do have afib which puts me in the cardiovascular disease column, number one killer of humans.

When my death comes, as it will for every living thing in this theater we call Earth, I want to be so fulfilled with life to the point of being tired of living, to be ready to say goodbye and willing to take that last breath and give up the ghost to rest and reflect and plan for the next go round.

In the meantime, I try to be a good person and, if I’m lucky, as loved as my sister was.

the ways in which I miss my sister

an incomplete list…

Pam was the family memory and historian. She delved into our genealogy tracing us back as far as the 900s but more than that she was the person I always went to to confirm a memory or ask a question about growing up in our house or about our parents. Now that resource is gone and with it so much of my own history because my memory is shit.

She knew how to make anything, everything. We’d be out at some craft fair and if I showed interest in buying some sort of personal hand made product she would whisper in my ear that that person is charging too much for that, I’ll send you the recipe.

I haven’t bought soap in decades because she made our soap. When my supply runs out I’ll have to start buying soap.

I haven’t made pralines in three years because I haven’t had pecans. I have some this year but the only time I was successful was when I did it at her house, in her kitchen, with her.

She was an herb gardener and every spring she would start her herb garden anew. Whatever fresh herb, or dried herb or spice for that matter, I needed when I was cooking I could just walk across the street and get it.

She kept the fence line in front of her house clear of weeds and vines which out here in the county is a monumental task that I now have to attend to.

I don’t have anyone to go to estate sales or art/craft shows with.

I no longer have someone I can vent to about certain people.

She was the one person I would exchange gifts with during the holiday season mainly because she refused to not get me anything no matter how many times I suggested it. I have her present here but she died before I could give it to her. She was a tea aficionado and had a small collection of teapots. This one is an antique cast iron one cup teapot. Now what do I do with it?

We would often, when we were going on an outing, show up in the same shorts and if not the same shirt, the same color shirt. Unplanned of course.

No one will tell me now that my sister and I look alike, a fact that always amused the hell out of us as she was blond blue eyed with straight hair and I have brown hair and eyes and wavy unreasonable hair.

kitties, the Mac mini, and death effects

I'm still waiting for SPOT to arrange to have the three 'feral' kittens fixed and sent to their new homes. I have feral in apostrophes because they aren't exactly feral, not completely tame but not completely feral either. They are very wary but I've been doing what I can to acclimate them to human touch. As reported earlier, I am able to stroke all three kittens while they eat. Sometimes just two or three times as long as I don't try to touch their heads before they back off except for the brown tabby. He lets me stroke him the most. When I go over to feed them in the evening about 4:30 they come running out and hiss at me.  Saturday night before I put food in the dishes underneath the screened in porch I sat on the ground with a handful of food in my outstretched arm calling to the kittens. The gray tabby circled me continuously, would approach but never got up the courage. I held out the other hand with food as well and, being hungry, all three would sort of approach but then back off because I was watching them. So I averted my gaze and waited patiently and the brown tabby finally got up the courage to eat out of my hand and then the female that looks like Momcat came and ate out of the other hand which really surprised me because she has been the most skittish. The gray tabby that I thought would be the first never did. After most of the food was gone out of my hands I filled their dishes. So I did it again Sunday evening and last night. They were quicker to approach last night.

I spent most of the day Sunday and the morning yesterday getting my new computer set up and all the data transferred with constant help via face time from my niece’s husband Greg so now I’m using the Mac mini with a Dell monitor. Yay!!! I’ve unplugged my ancient iMac and moved it aside. 

When I wasn’t setting up the new computer Sunday I was moving more plants in as it dipped down to near freezing that night and we definitely had a frost. 

But no rain, all the chances of rain dissipate so now I’m back to watering my yard and Pam’s. I’ve been doing a little maintenance over there, mostly weeding her few flower beds. She swore when she moved into that house that she was done with flower beds, just wanted a few plantings and an herb garden. I scoffed. Little by little a little flower bed appeared and then another and then another, five or six. 

When all the family was here I think the grandkids went through some of Pam’s christmas ornaments and took ones they wanted. All her christmas stuff is in tubs in her shed. I need to sort through that stuff now that the immediacy of her death is over, take pictures and canvas her kids and grandkids and see if they want any of it before I donate it somewhere. She had an antique Santa that people have tried to buy off her many times. 

It was a month last Sunday that I found her. Has it only been a month? She’s drifting further and further away. I’m a little freaked out when I think about it. Our father died of a massive stroke at 73, the age I am now, my sister at 76. She and I, we expected to take after our paternal Aunt Doll who lived well into her 90s and only died because she got tired of living so this was a cold splash of water in my face. What does that mean for me? Do I only have a few years left? Should I start getting my ducks in a row, preparing like my sister did? Her will and the letter that accompanied it that she started working on after she moved over here was so organized…here’s where this is, here’s where that is, this is what to do about this other, these are the things that are valuable, this book has all the information you will need, etc.; as if she knew somehow. Maybe she did. She was very open to the spiritual world, she saw ghosts unless she walled off that part of her psyche. I wondered if she would appear to me. So far no, not even in a dream, but then I’ve never had that ability to see. 

They say one of the stages of grief is anger. I’m not angry. I’m sad that’s she’s gone, I’m sad that she abandoned me. I can’t think of her too much, about how sudden her death, without crying still.

OK, that’s enough of that.

 

life goes on for the living

I had a fairly normal day Wednesday but then I didn't have to talk to anyone, had three errands to run; took the recycling to the site, got a box from the post office to send all those jewels and lenses to my friend Steve in Colorado that does stained glass, and got another bucket of pecans cracked. So far I've shelled eleven and a half pounds of pecans and given away four. I'm still picking pecans up out of the yard and my neighbor's yard. So many leaves have fallen now that it takes longer shuffling through them but it'll be easier once Marc mows/mulches the leaves.

I went to SHARE Thursday and got lots of hugs and well wishes and every time I would tear up but it was good to be busy and have something to focus on. My station was a mess. Not a messy mess but nothing was in the right place and I had to rearrange everything back to the way I like it. On the other hand, yoga at Hesed House that night was particularly hard. Stephanie always starts out with quiet breathing and focusing on any aches or pains and emotions and how those emotions connect to your body and tears were just rolling down my face and I was thinking it was too soon, too soon, but once we got into actual body movements it was easier.

We had rain Thursday, nearly all day but it only amounted to 5/8”, and drizzly yesterday. The rain packed the leaves down and I picked up over two gallons worth of pecans yesterday. My little food garden is growing. The broccoli is starting to form. I don't know if you can see it in this picture (assuming I can figure out how to change the picture from MB to KB on my phone and add it in) but the very center is a tiny broccoli head. 

The cauliflower doesn't look like it's making yet but the cabbage is starting to form little heads.

Still no movement on getting the kittens fixed and moved to new homes. I feed them every night, Momcat still lets me pet her and last night I managed to stroke the two tabbies, one brown and the other gray, several times but only while they are eating. Their hunger is overcoming their fear whereas before their fear was overcoming their hunger. It still takes me several tries. The third kitten which resembles Momcat and is bigger than the other two and damn near as big as Momcat who is a small cat, still backs off and won't let me touch her.

Today I may try to get the pansies in the ground that I bought a month ago but it's still very wet and overcast out there or maybe I'll pack up the glass jewels or maybe I'll go poach pecans from the backyard of the vacant house that's for sale across the street or maybe I'll just sit and read all day and give my poor arthritic left thumb joint a break from shelling pecans.

Thursday I did something I don't think I would have done if my sister was still alive. It was almost time to lock the door and several of the volunteers were sitting around chatting when I walked up and one of them said they were planning a trip to Brookwood to shop for Christmas and have lunch and did anyone want to join them. Brookwood is a residential community for adults with disabilities and a wholesale nursery where the residents do all the work with supervision from planting the seeds to caring for the mature plants. They have a craft center where the residents make garden related items, a gift shop, a retail greenhouse, and a fabulous restaurant. It's been years since I've been out there and I had planned on suggesting a day trip to Pam before she died so I piped up, I'd like to go. Of course that night my social anxiety popped up, what have I done, but life does go on for the living even when there is a big hole you have to navigate around.

 

remembering my sister and holding her in our hearts

A week ago today I found my sister and just like that my life has changed irrevocably. Heartfelt thank yous to all who have expressed your love, sadness, and support. There is no way I could ever reply to each of you individually.

The first few days most of the family that gathered were still here, each of us supporting the other, while we dealt with the immediate tasks required after a death...contacting a funeral home and retrieving the body for cremation, acquiring the death certificates, reading the will, figuring out which of her bills were outstanding, getting access to her phone, etc. Her house reverts back to me and we have decided to just let everything sit for now although her kids, grandkids, me, my grandkids have tagged the things we would like to have, small things have already been taken. It's weird though to walk through the house and see little bits of blue tape with names written on it stuck on just about everything. We're going to keep the house as a furnished guest house for now since I don't have a spare room for when people visit. Her granddaughter who lives in Cincinnati wants 'the boys', Pam's two cats, but can't take them until next summer so my granddaughter Robin who lives here with her parents is going to move into the house in the interim and take care of them.

My sister was not religious and so there would not be a funeral or service or viewing but the family decided to have a life celebration for her on the following Friday at my house because it was bigger than Pam's house. While I had called everyone else to spread the word, Monday afternoon Denise and I went to Hesed House, a community resource center where my sister volunteered arranging the monthly EarthLab lectures, to tell the director, Stephanie, in person and she offered to hold it there on the back deck and pergola behind the Welcome Center which we accepted immediately since Pam was very involved with Hesed House and it is a beautiful space.

When we got there Friday afternoon they had set up tables and chairs, vases with garden flowers, tables for refreshments and one for a sort of altar with Pam's picture and flowers and bits and pieces of things that related to my sister's life. The weather was perfect. We had notified her friends that I had contact information for, the garden club of which Pam was a past president, the museum people where she worked two days a week, Stephanie sent out a notice to her mailing list and people came to honor and remember my sister. All the family that had been at the hospital returned plus her stepson from Virginia, her granddaughter from Cincinnati, and her brother from the PNW. 

My daughter created and printed out a beautiful eulogy and remembrance. 

Stephanie arranged for us to plant a tree in Pam's honor there on the grounds of Hesed House during the celebration. She gave the eulogy, she read what I had written out for me because there was no way I was going to be coherent, other people got up and spoke. We had a memory book for people to write in, something I've not had the courage to read yet.

It was beautiful and the hardest fucking day of my life.

Afterwards we all went out to dinner to celebrate her granddaughter Abby's birthday which was that day.

Seeing all the family together, still missing ten people, my brother and I marveled at how big the family has grown from the days when we could count us all on two hands and didn't need all the fingers.