Friday, January 18, 2008

Memorial service

Today was a very busy but positive day. I got up when I thought the cleaning lady was arriving but she never did appear. The mystery was solved when she called this evening to say that she’d found vehicles in the yard this morning and came in to see someone sleeping on the couch and had heard the message where I sounded so terrible with the cold that she didn’t think it was a good idea to try to clean here today. I kind of had to agree as it was a kind of busy morning with finalizing details, getting ready and trying to eat our way through food delivered. We’ve been eating courtesy of the kindness of neighbours since Tuesday.

The weather was windy and rainy but not snow at least. There was a large group of people at the memorial service, which is quite a tribute when you think of someone of that age. There were a number of employees from the Manor attending which was such a lovely gesture as Mom thought of them as her second family. I managed to get the eulogy together and deliver it with my gravely voice from the cold which is still hanging on. We stopped to visit with folks who stayed for a while after the service and that was a nice final chapter. We headed on home and my oldest brother and his wife arrived in a bit to see our house, check out the family scrapbook and genealogy research I’ve done before they headed back to Dartmouth. We had a late family supper with the kids and have finally unwound.

I’ve discovered that I don’t have to go back to work on Monday after all as orientation is cancelled so I’ll just take daughter # 2 back to university without any time pressures. Will pay the piper for all this on Tuesday when I head back in to the office.