OT: Love on a cake plate

First, thanks to Guylty for writing and KatharineD for suggesting the tremendously comforting *ooof* and you all for the sweet comments and the “Memoriam” idea. My Armitage fantasies — when my brain’s been empty for a few moments — have been in overdrive. It’s great to be able to share this with all of you. Obscura came on behalf of the blog readers and gave me a big hug from herself and from all of you. Thanks, Obscura and everyone who was there in thoughts.

I know I need to write but I can’t think what.

I should know by now, after years of this, that you just open up a window and write.

But I still don’t know what to say.

Maybe it’s that I often write when I’m unable to cry, but today I cried and cried (and laughed) and cried?

Tomorrow I have to start writing the thank yous, and I’m hoping to be able to write here again.

I feel like I could write a Great Gatsby-esque list of all the people who visited us in the last two days. My high school English teacher who ran three times unsuccessfully for state superintendent of public instruction; the neighbor who hates my father and has been involved in a lot line / tree squabble with him for at least seven years; the one boy my mother dated before she fell in love with my dad, now an old man, divorced three times, whose nickname at school was “Full-Body Press”; my father’s 94-year-old godmother, who drove herself; — I could go on and on. We didn’t schedule enough visitation — we planned four hours and spent five and a half and the line had to be closed so church could start. As a consequence of seeing all these people, on top of my own reactions and things family members have said, a lot has been said to me in the last two days, and I’ve noted some of it, but it’s all too much to say here.

But here’s a Wisconsin story. A man who looked to be in his eighties or so came up to me in the line of guests and said, “I’m Harley Kopitzke, I’m so sorry for your loss,” and I said, “Thank you. Are you a relative?” (My great-grandmother’s maiden name was Kopitzke.) And he said, “Yes, on both sides, I’m your grandmother’s second cousin and your grandfather’s third cousin by marriage,” and I said, “Oh, you must take family connections very seriously,” and he said, “When I was baling hay for your grandfather, your mother was my tractor driver,” and somehow, that incongruous detail made me burst into tears. (My mother teased me my whole life that I never drove a tractor.) He said, “I was always picking on her because she couldn’t drive a curve tight enough. But I haven’t seen your mother since she was twelve,” and I said, still a little mystified, “It was very kind of you to come, then,” and he said, “Your grandfather hired me to help with chores when I couldn’t find other work, and when he couldn’t hire me, he invited me to eat with them. I missed his funeral because I was living in Minnesota, back then, but I wanted to make it up to him.”

The sermon (Romans 5:1-11) was about how suffering produces endurance, etc., and pastor started it by saying, “This was as usual a Mrs. Servetus challenge — in forty years in ministry I have never had to preach a sermon on this text.” I wonder if she had any idea. He put in a funny joke in discussing her endurance: “Think of it — she lived with Mr. Servetus for fifty-two years,” and the congregation all laughed, including my dad, but then pastor broke down on the pulpit while he was talking about my mother’s kindness to him. And he built the Sh’ma into the sermon, as an incidence of transforming love, which moved and stunned me.

I was having a hard time singing, but then I thought of my mother’s example and I was able to belt out the third hymn. After all — I thought — you know it by heart.

The church was full and Obscura said she thought she might not find parking. About a third of the congregation stayed for the luncheon; we underestimated the numbers for the meal by about thirty percent but the stalwart women of the Ladies’ Aid were obviously counting the guests during the service and rustled up a little more food and fed everyone. One of the standards of the Lutheran funeral in Wisconsin is a dessert plate with tiny squares of cookies, bars, and cake of different kinds. The squares are small both so you can’t refuse, but also so that you can try many different kinds.

In the receiving line, one of my mother’s friends said, “In all my days of putting together dessert plates for funerals at this church, I’ve never seen so many different kinds of sweets from so many different people. I think every single woman in the Ladies’ Aid promised something. There’s such an amazing variety. I’ve put away a plate for you to take one of each kind home. I’ll catch you after the lunch.”

The plate she gave me was put together like a mosaic.

“See how much we loved your mother?” she said, and beamed at me.

I said, “Mom would have picked out–”

and she said, “The lemon bar. I know, dear.”

And now I’m crying again.

~ by Servetus on September 4, 2013.