I just got home from traveling to my mom’s memorial service.

My brothers and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out what we would do, and despite the long-distance arrangements (two of us are in California and two are in Indiana) we managed to pull it together perfectly.

I always used to joke that my mom would show up late for her own funeral. This wasn’t a funeral, per se, because she donated her body for medical research, but the real joke is that my daughter, her girlfriend and I got caught up in the Great American Airlines Flight Cancellation Debacle and it was we who were almost late to the funeral. Mom would have gotten a huge laugh out of that.

People from all over showed up to say goodbye, including my brother’s first wife and my dad’s second wife’s sister. Some people who knew Mom from the Springbank Retreat Center drove many miles to sing at the service. The four of us all picked “Try to Remember” from the soundtrack of “The Fantasticks” as the song that would best represent Mom, but I knew that she also wanted Leon Bibb’s “Lost in the Stars” played, so I transferred that from an old record to digital format and my younger brother cleaned up the few odd crackles in it. And we all sang along with Judy Collins’ “Amazing Grace” at the end (fortunately, I could sing it an octave lower than she did).

All in all, I think it was the kind of send-off Mom would have approved of.

She died a month ago today and I still don’t really have it in my head that she’s gone.

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