Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Joan's Funeral

On Friday March 27th my great-aunt Joan passed away. She was 89 years old and had lived an amazing and full life. Taryn did a wonderful tribute to Joan on her blog so here I will talk about the funeral. Sadly, I was the only one of my sisters that was able to make it to the funeral, we could not find a flight that worked for Karleigh and Taryn already had a flight this week. I went down on Friday evening and then had to return on Sunday afternoon but it was great to be there even if it was only for a short time. We held the service in Joan's church building on Saturday morning, my uncle Rocky gave the eulogy and my cousins sang. It was a beautiful service and I think it was a good celebration of the life she lived. The tree outside the building was full of blossoms and looked very similar to a tree from a painting in her home. The painting was of a park Joan walked through on the way to school as a child, it was done by my aunt. As my aunt Cara said, the tree was for Joan. We also went out to the cemetery for a short service. Joan served in the military during WWII so she received a flag for her service. This flag was given to my mom which was very special. I have an aunt and uncle who are Jewish, and if I understand correctly, it is part of their beliefs that it is important to watch the casket lowered and then to throw some dirt into the grave, it helps with the healing and closure. We were all able to take part in that so that was a new experience. Although we all missed Joan it was good to come together as a family and celebrate what a wonderful woman she was. We were able to get together and talk about our memories, it brought together family who do not get to see each other often. I walked around the house with a few of my cousins and we recorded some of our memories of her. They are older than me so it was interesting to see how our memories differed. We also wen through Joan's things and were all able to take things to remember her by. I love her and will miss her but I know that she is in a better place and with those that she loves.
The view from Joan's back porch, I have so many memories from here.

2 comments:

Grant and Taryn Layton said...

Thanks for the post! I really wish I could have been there :( I'm glad I get to go stay in the house this week though. You did a great job recounting the events. I'm so glad that you got to go :)

justified said...

Yeah I'll definitely be at graduation. In fact I come back on Sunday. And yes, I'm glad you asked for book suggestions because I have been a reading machine these past 3 months.
Honeymoon with My Brother
How the World Makes Love
(Both are by Franz Wisner)

I really liked Angels and Demons by Dan Brown as well.

Also anything by Malcolm Gladwell is really really interesting; I have only read The Tipping Point, but I just bought Blink and he has another one called Outliers that I actually started reading in the book store. His stuff is awesome.

If you want something short I love The Alchemist by Paul Cohelo.
Or something longer and I enjoyed Life of Pi.

Whew. That was a lot of books. Sorry.My top suggestion right now, Honeymoon with My Brother. LOVED it!