I left Louisville at about 6:45 a.m. Saturday, but still managed to be late both to great Aunt Mildred's Westerville burial and Mt. Vernon memorial service. The 8-minute burial service - basically a prayer by the pastor, I'm told - had just ended when I got to Pioneer Cemetery. I chatted briefly with two of my aunts (Sandy and June) and cousin Diana, as well as with Mildred's son Neil and grandson Aaron. Some of these folks I remembered most from Grandma's funeral. Mlidred is Grandpa's younger sister, who I visited at a retirement center/nursing home in Mt. Vernon in December (after my elongated stay there due to a hospital trip) and whose husband Warren died a year and a half ago.
June, Diana, and I walked back through a bit of Pioneer Cemetery, which Mom, Stephanie, and I had visited in May. Now, Warren, Mildred, and Grandma are all buried on two adjoining plots. Aunt June's husband, Fred's, grave is pictured below, and June will be buried there someday.
It was already getting pretty hot by 11 a.m. The burial was before the service because the latest Pioneer does burials on Saturday is at 11 a.m. By the time we got back around to Mildred's grave, her casket - which had been open casket - a first for me at a cemetery - at the service - was already gone, in the ground.
I dilly-dallied a little and then - with a festival on - got lost for a while in downtown Mt. Vernon looking for the church. It turns out that the church is right next to one of the few places in Mt. Vernon I've been to - the public library - but I didn't know this and got turned around anyway. Mildred and Warren moved to Mt. Vernon after Warren retired as a minister partly because their son Neil lived there. One thing that threw me off was that - like Grandpa, Warren, and Stephanie - the Mulberry Street Methodist Church is apparently an old Evangelical and United Brethren church, and so there is another Methodist church - an old Methodist Episcopal church - a couple of blocks away.
In the service, I missed the singing by the soloist but heard the sharing by friends and family members - which was apparently structured the same as Warren's funeral there last year - and the sermon. The pastor had only been there for a year, but he'd clearly been over to the retirement center and got to know Mildred. Mildred had had surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in May on a throat problem, which had been bothering her for a while. But weeks later she turned up with serious liver/pancreas cancer, and she opted not to get chemotherapy, and went faster than they might even have warned her. This was one of those funerals where folks are sure the person is going to heaven. And so there was sorrow mixed with she lived a good life and God has called her to a better place.
Some church women helped provide a lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the hourlong service. I rolled Grandpa down there in a wheelchair - with his brother Loren in the elevator. Loren, with Alzheimer's at a nursing home in Westerville where - until June - brother Ronald - also with dementia - also lived - didn't make it to the burial - with its hot weather and uneven ground - but did make it to the service. Familiy members had gone through Mildred's stuff and produced several mementos and photo albums, including samples of her church craft work - something on which she apparently collaborated with Grandma (and I saw some similar designs).
Aunt Sandy and Aunt June had both seen Mildred recently. I later saw a picture of Mildred, Loren, and Grandpa together for Ronald's funeral in June. That's probably the last time Grandpa and Mildred saw each other. Grandpa has not gotten around as much recently, but until very recently I believe he and Mildred spoke by phone regularly. Grandpa doesn't hear great, and so it's not always easy to talk with him by phone. Family members reminisced about Mildred - both Neil and Aaron spoke at the service - and her old-fashioned letter-writing, and I have a letter that Mildred wrote us after Christmas probably a year and a half ago - part of what inspired me to visit her just nine hours after I'd gotten out of the hospital
In the food line - below - in the blue - is Loren's daughter Jeannie, a retired Marietta (OH) school teacher whom I'd last seen at Grandma's funeral - and Becky - a nursing home employee who was teary during the service (when she sat back in the back - I sat there instead of up front with the family because I got there so late) and very helpful/skilled with Loren. (Both Jeannie and Becki worked with Loren.) I talked briefly with Loren. It wasn't clear whether he figured out who I was and whether he recognized pictures. Going through a photo album with some old pictures with Grandpa and him was a similar strategy with what we tried with Louise Tilly. When they could see the pictures, it seemed Grandpa did a better job of remembering them/things. Of course, Louise and I once knew each other better than Loren and I did - so it wasn't clear whether Loren would have remembered much about me even if he was in perfect health.
Partly because most other folks I knew were already at an overflowing table, I sat with Neil (pictured below talking with his pastor - about motorcycle repair - both of them are bikers!) and his family. Also sitting with us were Neil's son, Aaron; Neil's wife, Pam; and Aaron's daughter, Haley. Aaron's Korean American wife was home with their second daughter, second, and is pregnant with a third. I believe the three of them (Haley, then 1 or 2 included, were at Grandma's funeral.)
Becki helped show Loren and Grandpa a photo album.
It was hot but I pulled out a blackish suit that my father recently sent - from one or the other of my uncles - and I wore it, even though it doesn't fit perfectly. It fit in with other suits that men wore - including Grandpa, Aaron, and Loren (posing below).
Neil was added in too.
We were among the last to leave as June, Don, Sandy, and I headed across town (though not quite as far as the December 2008 gas station, motel, and hospital - or the retirement center. Warren and Mildred lived in the retirement center for about a year. Then, after his Alzheimer's diagnosis, the staff became more concerned about Warren's care and they moved Warren over to the constant care wing. Mildred would go over to visit him several times a day. But because he became adept at doffing some of the security parahernalia - like putting the aluminum foil from the baked potatoes over a security wrist band he wore - so that he wouldn't set off the security alarms when he crossed over from the constant care side to the retirement center side this was curbed. Eventually Mildred wouldn't let him in their old apartment - she went ahead and called the staff. One of the concerns is that he could easily become confused and wheel himself out into the parking lot - and, potentially, down the hill and into the road and who knows where. I remember that Warren seemed a bit mischievous. Mildred was a bit of a straight woman - but - from what I've read of her 2003 typed 13-page memoirs, she was clearly a partner in ministry in all of those years when Warren was a pastor of EUB and Methodist churches in Ohio and Pennsylvania - and she was always proud of her daring side when she would do things he wouldn't. They met at Grandpa's Vine Street evangelical church in Westerville, when Mildred lived with her family in Westerville and Warren was an undergraduate from PA in the then Westerville EUB college, Otterbein (where my mother later took classes).
-- Perry
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