Funeral

My mom's funeral mass was at St. Edmond's Catholic church this morning at 11am. Pall bearers arrived at 9:15am in a biting wind with temperatures around 15F. We carried the the casket from the hearse to the altar around 9:30am. A private viewing followed until 10am, followed by a public viewing until just about 11am.

The funeral mass was well-done. The priest was one that knew my mother well and he delivered a touching homily/eulogy. The cantor was talented and did a respectable Ave Maria. A long-time friend of my mother, Jim Chmelik, gave a stirring eulogy at the end of the mass. Jim has known my mom for going on 40 years. They met when they both worked a warehouse job in Gaithersburg, MD. Oddly enough, Jim now lives in Idaho and one of his sons goes to Walla Walla Community College. A weird coincidence to say the least.

After the mass, we put the casket back into the hearse. The interment will be tomorrow morning. Folks gathered at my mom's house afterwards. We put out some trays of Mexican food from La Tonalteca, one of my mom's favorite restaurants. It's rare for all of us to be in the same location. We had a nice time catching up. My sister Kathy managed to get a photo of a lot of us:

We spent the rest of the day there with people trickling away until it was just my family, Jo-Anne's family and Kathy. The lack of sleep caught up with me and I fell asleep on a love seat on the sun porch for 4 hours. I suppose the rest of them had a nice time, haha. My sister Kathy learned how to "floss":

Delaware to Baltimore and back

Spent the day going through photos in my mom's house. Here's one of me at my sister's graduation from William & Mary in 1985. That's my dad on the left, my brother, Keith, and my sister Jo-Anne:

My mom's 4 dogs have spent most of the day outside and out of the way. The poor things:

Luke is in the middle of his semester at GVSU. He's doing a bit of homework in one of the lulls:

Katie Jo is sorting through photos for a collage to show at the reception after the funeral:

Laura, Jo-Anne and Kathy made a huge amount of progress sorting through stuff in the basement:

We made a run to Home Depot for some boxes. The sunset was brilliant and the full moon impressive:

Emily arrived here in Baltimore from Santa Barbara at 10:30pm. We're killing time in a diner near the airport waiting for Rachel's flight (90 mins late):

We're looking at getting back to Delaware at around 3:30am if all goes well. We're due at the church for the funeral at 9:15am. It's gonna be a rough day tomorrow.

Back to Delaware

My talk went well this morning. In fact, the whole session I was in was pretty interesting. I had a good discussion with some folks from Centre College about re-working the intro calc sequence to include a more computational approach. I'm hoping to follow up with them later to get some details.

Scott and I ate lunch at Chipotle and I drove him to BWI for his flight. I was good hanging with him even though our time together was abbreviated by my trip to Delaware. After dropping him off, I drove back to Delaware to continue with the funeral preparations.

Katie Jo arrived last night. Ric arrived today. John and Luke arrived this evening. Laura got here a bit after that. She's going on 24 hours of wake/travel time as I write this.

Our home base has been my mom's house. This is here little dog Donnie (one of her 4 orphaned dogs):

I'm not sure what story Kathy was trying to tell here, but there's a lot of body language:

I'm in bed now. Tomorrow's another busy day before the funeral on Monday.

Back to Baltimore

Jo-Anne, Kathy, and I spent the day getting details worked out for the funeral. We finalized the obituary and gathered photos. Here's one for the obit and prayer cards:

These are for a collage at the viewing. This is as many of us as I've ever seen in one place. An old beach photo:

This is mom in 1960:

And her in her Kindergarten graduation in 1944:

Later, we went to the church to arrange the details of the funeral mass:

Later we did a bit of house cleaning. We also spent a fair amount of time looking for mom's wedding ring. No dice yet.

Keith cooked hamburgers for dinner. After dinner, I headed back to Baltimore so I can give my talk tomorrow. I need to go over my talk, but mostly I'm ready.

Mom Died

I missed a phone call from my sister over night. When I checked in with her this morning, I learned that my mom died in the night. My mom's been seriously ill for a few months, but her death surprised us. Indeed, I had plans to visit her for a couple of days after the math conference, but it was not meant to be. People plan, the universe laughs.

Laura changed my rental car reservation and I drove to Rehoboth Beach to be with my sister and brother who were already there. My other sister arrived shortly after I did.

We spent the better part of the afternoon making funeral arrangements and informing people.

The funeral is Monday. People are making arrangements to come. Emily, Rachel and Laura are all planning to come. There's still a lot to do tomorrow.