{"id":213,"date":"2008-04-16T09:29:15","date_gmt":"2008-04-16T17:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/just-thinking\/a-fond-farewell-to-my-mother\/"},"modified":"2008-04-16T09:29:15","modified_gmt":"2008-04-16T17:29:15","slug":"a-fond-farewell-to-my-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/?p=213","title":{"rendered":"a fond farewell to my mother"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just got home from traveling to my mom&#8217;s memorial service. <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/infmom.net\/images\/teruska.gif\" alt=\"My mother in happier days\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" height=\"303\" hspace=\"7\" vspace=\"0\" width=\"261\" \/><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>I always used to joke that my mom would show up late for her own funeral.  This wasn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>People from all over showed up to say goodbye, including my brother&#8217;s first wife and my dad&#8217;s second wife&#8217;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 &#8220;Try to Remember&#8221; from the soundtrack of &#8220;The Fantasticks&#8221; as the song that would best represent Mom, but I knew that she also wanted Leon Bibb&#8217;s &#8220;Lost in the Stars&#8221; 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&#8217; &#8220;Amazing Grace&#8221; at the end (fortunately, I could sing it an octave lower than she did).<\/p>\n<p>All in all, I think it was the kind of send-off Mom would have approved of.<\/p>\n<p>She died a month ago today and I still don&#8217;t really have it in my head that she&#8217;s gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just got home from traveling to my mom&#8217;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 &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/?p=213\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/infmom.net\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}