News of My Mother Passing Away

Friday February 19

I went on the internet and after checking one email box I found it was real slow. So I went out to buy some things that we needed for home.

When I check my email I found I got a letter from Heather. She told me that our mother died at 2:00am. She sent the email about 5.30pm on Thursday and was referring to the early morning hours that day.

I broke into tears and cried right after I read the words that she died. I called Jayne where she came to hug me. There were tears in her eyes, too.

I wrote a letter back to ask for Heather’s phone number and that I would call her. She must have been online as I got an email with her number.

After I talked to Heather I called Sharon then Carol.

The conversation with Heather went something like this:

About 8:00am
Heather said that the funeral will be at Henry’s in Audubon (the town where my mother last had her home). It will be on Monday at 10am. The service will be at 11:00am then they will go to the cemetery near Lake View Hospital. From there they will go to The Pub. I asked Heather, a pub? Thinking it was cheap place to go, and she said that it’s a nice restaurant.

Heather said that she, Scott, her oldest (Daniel) and her youngest boy will go. They will leave Sunday, spend two nights in N.J.

She told me that Mom will be buried where her grandparents, the Biddel are. She said that two cousins are buried there who died in child birth.

She also told me some other family news. On her father’s side, she said that Johnny died a couple of years ago of lung cancer, that Aunt Dorothy died last Autumn (a first cousin of my grandmother, Nana). Then Ruth had a stroke last week. Johnny and Ruth is from my step-father’s first marriage.

She said that the obituary will be in the Courier-Post Saturday and that the notice cost over $300!

After a break and telling Jayne the news, I called Sharon.

The conversation with Sharon went something like this:

Sharon said that Mom died at 1:50am and was called by the nurse at 2:00am on Thursday. She said that she and Alan went to the hospice.

Sharon said that she and Carol visited my mother each day this past week. It was because they knew she was going to die soon. They had a catheter in her arm, and then the day before she died there was blood in it, later there was nothing in it.

I was told that John has bad knees and he hurt his back (taking down an inmate in jail where he works). Then Scott hurt his back shovelling snow. Alan has a bad knee. So that would just leave Douglas and Steve. She has to ask the funeral if they have someone that can carry the casket.

That’s a sham that so many young guys in our family have bone injuries.

I was told that the temperature will go up to 40F today, but there is still a lot of snow on the ground through all the streets have been cleared. Sharon said that there was still snow on the ground from December when the two heavy snow storms came this month.

I then talked to Jayne and told her what Sharon said.

The conversation with Carol went something like this:

Carol said that there will be enough pall bearers and they would only need one. So, she thinks that those with injuries will be able to carry the casket. She said that Steve will be coming with his girlfriend and spend the nights there.

She told me that Gammy (my great grandmother) and her husband bought two extra plots. They had their little boy and girl buried there and they are buried there. I think that Nana is buried there, too. They still had two extra lots and my mother had the deeds to them. So, she will be using one of them and there is one more left.

Carol said she plans to give an elegy for her sister and tell of the pranks she used to play and all the fun she was. She related one to me about when we rented a house in Cape May, NJ. And my Uncle Donald came. He is my mother and Carol’s brother. This was at a time when Steve was a baby. Uncle Donald went to the bathroom and saw ‘shite’ all over. He yelled, “Carol, Carol. What did you do, change the diaper in the dark. There is shit all over!” Well, my mother, June, and Carol and the rest of us laughed and laughed. What happened was she got some gram crackers, which are brown, soaked them in water and put them around the toilet seat and the floor. Of course, it didn’t stink but that is the power of suggestion. The power of suggestion or association or whatever, would actually produce the sensation that goes with ‘shite’.

So, it’s good that Carol will tell stories like that. She was such a fun-going person.

I told Carol that it would be 50 years this year that my father died.
Carol said that there will be about 25 people there.
After I got off the phone I told Jayne the conversation.

I said that I want to take a walk along the beach as this would be a nice peaceful place to be and reflex.

We walked along the beach and went to the Apollonia Hotel. This is a nice 5 star hotel where they have a nice seating area outside. We both had a cup of coffee there and had a nice talk. I took some pictures and had Jayne take some pictures of me. This will be a record of where I was on the day I heard the news that my mother died.

My Thoughts

I don’t know why Sharon couldn’t call me as soon as she got the news or at least call me later. It was 2:00am their time but it was 9:00am here. When Heather sent the email, it was on the 18th but with the time difference, I was already in bed. Besides, I don’t check the email every hour.

Who does?

Sharon brought up the fact that she has $700 of mine in a bank that is money left over from my grandmother, Mom-Mom. I had forgotten about it. She wanted to know my address so she could mail me the check. The story is, that she had said she would mail it years ago, but nothing.

More than coincidence

In the evening Jayne and I watch a video that I had bought about a week ago. I first put on a Bonanza film, but we saw that we had already seen it on a DVD we bought in Ecuador. So I put in Burns and Allen Show. We saw a couple of episodes. I noticed it was the year that I was born. On this show they incorporated the commercial in the show. The guy said the Carnation Milk Company will be having ad in Life Magazine on June 30th. He showed the can of condensed milk and the ad. We’ll the funny thing is, this was the day before I was born! Of course, this was a big day in the life of my dear mother. And she liked this show when it was on the air.

I’m glad that my mother did not pass away on her birthday nor during the two heavy snow storms they just had about one week and two weeks ago.