4th Of July at the Beach!

Happy Independence Day to all of us! My day started VERY early with Kristin and I picking Mother up at 6:30 a.m. and heading on down the road......and farther down the road..... and even farther still! I drove until I-65 ended at Mobile and kept on driving due south until I arrived at the little beach house sitting nearly IN the Gulf of Mexico that we will call "home" for the next week.

It was a rather uneventful, even though very long, trip. I forgot my cell phone charger!! (grrr) BUT some friends are coming to join us on Monday for 2 or 3 days so perhaps I can coerce them into bringing me one.

Traffic was very heavy but we saw no accidents. Mother is in the intermediate stage of Alzheimer's Disease and it is moving like a speeding bullet, manifesting itself in various and sundry ugly ways so I worried about how she would fare in a car for 8 or 9 hours. I think she did better than me!

April, Bruce and Tristin were ahead of us the entire way and already had THEIR car unloaded when we got here.

Bruce's birthday is in a couple of weeks and I brought him an early birthday gift, a Cuisinart ice cream maker and he loved it! Of course, I gave it to him NOW so that we could all enjoy ice cream at the beach, lol.

The new berm constructed last year is nothing but a memory now, and that leaves this house sitting almost IN the water. It's a fabulous house.

The kids played in the sand and finally in the water (without their suits on), we had sandwiches and chips for dinner (no cooking on travel day), and watched a fabulous display of fireworks from our deck.

It's been a great day. My family is asleep. All I hear is the sound of the surf beating up against the pilings under the house. I feel the ever so slight movement of the house as the wind blows outside our door. I love this place so much, this Dauphin Island, Alabama.

In Memory of Laura

People often ask me "what's the worst thing that ever happened to you in your job"? I guess that's because I'm a funeral director and embalmer and folks are just naturally morbidly curious. I really don't like to talk about my work much simply because of the confidential nature of it. But tonight I am feeling down and remembering a particular family I served in another city several years ago.

I had an appointment to make funeral arrangements at 8:30 a.m. with a family who had an infant daughter who had died. These families are always hard to serve. They have envisioned a life that included that child, and now that child is dead. The impact of that reality is horrific. I know.

For the sake of anonymity, I will call the mother Laura and the father Mark. They were both present for the arrangement conference where I found out quite a few things. Laura and Mark were not married but had lived together for quite some time. They were both successful in their respective jobs and lived in a posh high-rise very comfortably. Laura was a career girl who put off having children so long that she thought she would never conceive. Well, at 40 she gave birth to a beautiful little girl. (The baby in the photo is definitely NOT their baby!)

Life changed for them immediately and they were both ecstatic, never letting the baby far from their sight. I'll call the baby Abby. When Abby was about six months old, she woke up in the night and after changing her, a tired Laura put her to bed with she and Mark. When they awoke the next morning, Abby had suffocated to death and there was nothing to be done.

They were, understandably, grief-stricken.

I will never forget Laura holding little Abby, wrapped in a blanket, throughout the visitation, never putting her down in the little casket prepared for her. She talked non-stop to her about her first day of school, proms she would never go to, the wedding day she would never have. On the way to the cemetery, she and Mark rode in the back of the limousine with the tiny casket encasing their daughter between them on the seat.

The guttural cries coming from that back seat as we lowered that tiny casket into the cold, cold ground are still as vivid to me today as they were all those years ago. Blame is often sought, and in this case, each parent blamed the other. How heart-wrenchingly sad!

But Laura's story does not end there. She knew, as I had confided in her, that I had lost a child, too, many years ago. She felt a sense of camaraderie there somehow and also knew that I had cared for her little girl with kindness and love.

She began to come to the funeral home occasionally to talk to me about her grief and sorrow. I told her that I certainly was not a counselor and that she needed to speak to someone much more qualified than me. One particular day she was especially upset and as soon as she left, I called her pastor and asked her to see her. Of course she immediately agreed and DID go to see her.

My job kept me very busy and I got on with other families and thought of her only occasionally. Her visits stopped.

But one day I got a call to go to the morgue and pick up a deceased suicide. Yes, there lay Laura covered with that white sheet on that cold, cold table. I will never forget her face for as long as I live. I could not embalm her myself. Not me.

She was bruised and battered. Suicide? I don't know.

The next day I met with Mark and with Laura's mother. Her mother accused Mark of beating her to death. Mark, of course, was defensive. It escalated into a shouting match. But all I could see was Laura, inconsolable over the loss of her child. Continuously reaching out for help. Help that she never found.

She is with Abby today and always. Buried beside her in a section reserved for babies only in that city. She is the exception.

Should I have done something different? Could I have?

Forever......Farrah

Unless you live on another planet, you have by now heard the news that the "Charlie's Angels" girl with the iconic hairstyle has died today.

I have nothing to say that can add to or take away from all the other things you have read or heard today but I do have some thoughts to share.

Like so many of you, I was a young mother and a faithful viewer of "Charlie's Angels" and didn't even realize until today that Farrah was only there for one season. She was, absolutely, gorgeous. Everyone who could wanted their hair to look like hers. She did go on to star in a few other projects, most notably, a made-for-TV movie "The Burning Bed" that I saw many times. It was actually a good work and changed my thinking about her acting skills. Before I saw that movie, I assumed she was just another pretty face along with a perfect body to match.

Tonight I watched about 30 minutes of the Barbara Walters special about Farrah and her life. I stand amazed and enlightened about her courageous fight against this rare cancer she had. Anal cancer. I don't know anyone else who has fought this particular cancer. But cancer is cancer. It can definitely be a death sentence and I have lost members of my family to it and many friends.

I was surprised that she made the choice to videotape so much of her personal struggle but upon reflection, maybe not. Maybe showing her determination and her fight will help someone else to fight harder. To fight the fear.

Her Doctor says that she died pain-free, surrounded by people she loved in an atmosphere of peace and love and that her "transition" was easy. Yes, that is what we all hope for.

Rest in peace, Farrah.

Jon & Kate

I watch television very rarely and must confess that I have never seen "Jon & Kate Make Eight". But I don't think you have to actually WATCH the program to keep up with what's going on there, which is precisely why I don't watch it. How sad that yet another marriage has failed and now six children will have a broken family. Of course, what kind of life did they have anyway? From what I understand, this family was using the proceeds from the show to support their family. And now I read that the show has been cancelled. What a mess!

I also read today that Ed McMahon has died at the age of 86. I spent many nights after the children were tucked in and prayers were said watching good ole' Johnny Carson in my bed, but never without his faithful sidekick Ed. Ed, as many of you know, was his support and in many opinions, helped to make Johnny what he was. I know he had many problems in later years, maybe most of his own doing, but he was still and to the end, an entertaining guy. So long, Ed.

On to more current events, why can't they find the "black boxes" from the jet that went down a couple of weeks ago? I know it won't change the tragic outcome of that fateful flight, but perhaps some information could have been retrieved that could prevent it from happening again.

Guess I am thinking deep thoughts tonight and feel a need to share them.

Friends brought their grandchildren over again tonight to swim and that was entertaining. I finished cleaning out the storage facility after work where Mom had been storing things. They are now in my garage and the car will be outside for a while until I get things organized again.

My daughter and I are deep into the planning for our week at the beach. We'll check in on Independence Day and are co-ordinating menus and grocery lists. And yes, the new Ice Age movie is on the "to-do" list, along with a visit to Bellingrath Gardens and Mary's for the seafood buffet. I bought FIVE kites at Wally World the other day so we are well-stocked on that front. I wish my son and his family could/would go. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't and this year they have decided not to come.

It is after ten, the cat is out, the television is making noise in another room for this quiet house. I am overwhelmed with my personal "honey-do" list (as I am my own honey). It will get done, or not.

Ed McMahon is dead, Jon and Kate are divorcing, life marches on.........

Bits of Berlin

This was a gloriously beautiful fountain just outside the Brandenburg Gate in a rather large square and as you would expect, lots of tourists milling around. The one oddity I found most curious was this nice-looking man BATHING in the fountain waters. And yes, he even brushed his teeth. As I strolled around the fountain, I found on the BACK side a group with an infant.....whose baby bottle was filled with water from the fountain.

This is a shot in one taken as we waited for a train, well, somewhere in Berlin.

And this, I must share with you, was a PIG KNUCKLE that my brother Wayne ordered. And ATE.

As we were dining in an outside cafe that night, next to our table was this cute puppy. Very friendly and thirsty :)

Oh, how I loved the city of Berlin........

Happy Fathers Day!

In tribute to my Dad, who died a year ago last month, I will post a few pictures tonight and celebrate this Fathers Day knowing he is in heaven with our heavenly Father. I miss him terribly still, but that initial grief has slowly been replaced with great memories, some not so great and a sense of comfort. This is a picture of Mom, Dad and me taken the summer after I moved to Hopkinsville, so that would have been the summer of 2000.
I just liked this picture of him taken at his kitchen table where he loved to be. I don't know when it was done, but I think before his diagnosis.

Yep, there he is again, at the table. It took Mom a long time to part with that old chair of his.

And of course, this was taken shortly before he died. Mom was so faithful to visit him EVERY day. She will never fully recover from the loss of Dad, but she is here in Hopkinsville now and neither of us are alone. (No, she won't live with me, though). She DID try to live with me when she first came here, but for some unknown reason, she couldn't wait to get out of here :)

I would think I would be a JOY to live with.

Anyway, Happy Fathers Day to all you dads out there. Yes, you will make mistakes along the way, but there's not a "rule book" for dads. Just be there. Be there.

Berlin Holocaust Memorial

This place in the city of Berlin was amazing. I felt at once awed and overwhelmed with sadness that such a travesty could ever have happened. It is a very solemn place buzzing with tourists taking photos and children laughing, but the significance of the memorial is never lost. I don't know if you can see them in the picture above, but someone put a single tulip on each stone. They had already begun to wilt when we arrived, but they served as a reminder of each life lost. What a moment for me! I felt like weeping the whole time I was there, reading and remembering the books I have read and yes, even movies I have watched from this horrible era in history.
As evidenced by the paint job, this is a "Trabi" safari and is available for rent in Berlin. These are modeled after the old cars that were driven in the East. Wayne thought it was "cute" but for some reason didn't want to rent one.

I wish you could read this. It was, of course, at the site of the memorial and was quite complete in the narrative. It was written in German on one side and in English on the other.

This was quite a vast land mass right in the heart of the city. So many lives lost! And such a moving tribute to those people. Lest we forget.

The modern architecture (one striking building seen here) is amazing. And more amazing to me is how all the modern structures blend so well with the old..

I'll post more pictures next time as I weed through them all and relive my trip!