So many things move so fast once someone has died and life really becomes a blur. I am having trouble figuring out what day it is and on what day I did something.
On Friday, we learned why someone shouldn’t die on a holiday weekend.
Before a body can be cremated, the regional coroner in Hastings must sign off on the process. The regional coroner will not sign off on the cremation until he receives a form from the deceased’s doctor.
Tell me – what oncologist was working on the Friday after New Year’s?
Next up is planning the service. Luckily, because this had been a long process, mom had met with the pastor of the local Lutheran church and they had totally planned the service the way she wanted it. That was nice. I wouldn’t have known what scriptures or songs to pick.
We had to pick an urn. I personally thought they were all ugly and don’t think mom would have liked any of them, but I let the majority rule and one was picked.
We had to decide on visitation. We chose none. There will be coffee, cake and those terribly cliché ham sandwiches at the church immediately following the service.
We had to come up with the obituary. The one that will go to press today is very similar to the one I wrote last Friday on this blog.
Of course, we had to fight about that too. My mother had been married twice, once to my father, and once to an abusive asshole that died of cancer in 2007. We all agreed that his name did not belong in the obit. My brothers wanted to list my mother’s name as Cindy Larimer in the obituary. No one would have known who that woman was. Her friends, neighbors and people in town knew her as Cindy Pennington and that is how she should be listed in the obituary. My family caved in to that demand – they had to out of respect form my mother.
I found it hard to function on Friday. The reality hit that my mom was gone. I found simple tasks to be impossible. I tried to open a Dr. Pepper in the car and successfully managed to have it explode upon opening it. I couldn’t enter numbers correctly into a calculator. I had to have the teller at the bank help me put my deposit together.
I have found the physical symptoms of grieving to be a pain in the ass.
The constant back and neck stiffness and aching is growing tiresome. The headache is somewhat controlled with ibuprofen. The inability to concentrate is infuriating. The insomnia has been bad, but I have found that if I fall asleep with someone I sleep much better. Heather has been a sweetheart when it comes to that. I stopped at her place Saturday night, just so I wasn’t alone, and fell asleep on her shoulder in short order. I slept so good that night. Other nights have been restless – up every couple of hours for an hour or so. The bags under my eyes are beginning to make me look like a raccoon.
There are little things too. Every Sunday morning, after the political talk shows, I could count on a call from my mom. She didn’t always understand the politics, but she wanted to talk to me about whatever she heard. She had become a bit of a political junkie while I was working on Congressman Walz’s campaign in 2006. She could babble for an hour about something she heard on Fox News. I spent years trying to convince her that Fox News was right-wing bullshit, but she never listened. With the Minnesota Senate recount concluded, mom would have a lot to talk about on Sunday.
In one of our last lucid conversations on Tuesday, we talked about the recount and whether or not I thought Franken would win, and if he won, did I think I had a shot at a job on his staff.
So I just read the obituary on the Post Bulletin’s website and found three errors. It is obvious that no one writing these obituaries ever had John Vivian as a professor.
Mom lived in Spring Valley, Minn., not Rochester, as the obituary would indicate. They got the names of my uncles wives wrong too. Splendid journalism, PB.
I miss her.
*** EDIT
I emailed Jay Furst, managing editor of the Post Bulletin about the errors in the obituary. Jay had the errors corrected immediately.
Thank you Jay.
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