Thank you...
...to everyone who expressed their sympathies and condolences in my last post and by direct email. Believe me, I read every one and I passed them along to my family-- they were amazed to know how many people out across the net cared enough to say so. It really does mean something to us, and we appreciate it.
We spent quite a lot of time at the funeral home this morning; most of the details had been preplanned, but paperwork had to be signed and a casket chosen. My mom's body will be laid to rest beside my dad in the family plot where about six generations rest now, in a cemetary that dates back to before the Civil War. I used to play there with friends when I was small-- it's full of huge, climbable trees shaggy with spanish moss and has stones with weird old inscriptions that we'd tell each other ghost stories about and then dare each other to touch. I've picked magnolias and camelias there, and wild blue spiderwort growing in the grass.
The viewing will be Thursday evening and the funeral Friday afternoon. I hope that right now Mama's dancing with my father in the wildest, rowdiest welcome-party anybody's ever seen, complete with swing and jazz and many old friends. I can see her in my mind, dressed like she was during the '40's in the photos we have-- like she did when she was the beautiful young woman my father married in 1944.
I'll be flying back on Tuesday after all the bits and pieces that go along with this sort of thing have been taken care of. I'm glad I came, and I'm glad it'll be over soon.
Thanks again, all. Thank you.