email to my sister
how you doing? i got back from up north friday after a 9 1/2 hour drive in which i stopped and got gas once. never a restroom break even. but i made it.

it actually would have been a good trip if the purpose was not so sad...and so deja vu. they were together 15 years, like mom and dad. when tim proposed he asked if he could be her children's father, just like dad asked mom if he could be your and jim's father. he was 49. and he dropped dead of a massive heart attack.

susan will do much better than mom though, i think. she doesn't drink, at least not to excess, or smoke at all, and she's a teacher very dedicated to what she does. the
community where they live is a close knit one. the casket was hand built by friend's of tim's using wood he had milled; the grave was dug by friends and the casket lowered
and the grave filled in right after the sharing. i grabbed a shovel and put a few piles of dirt in the grave. i figured i did it for my daughter i can do it for tim...

he was buried in sawyer's bar, a tiny town on the salmon river over a mountain from where they live in etna. the reception was held in the town hall there, a short walk
from the cemetery. susan, her daughter-in-law jennifer, and i were walking to the town hall and i decided to take some pictures of the river, which i hadn't had a chance really to see because that was the only day we went over the mountain.

check out the picture. * it was clear that day, after a week of foul weather. susan and i had both known it would clear up for tim's funeral, and it did, in spite of a lousy forecast. but when i uploaded the picture, i found that it wasn't so clear on the river? i think we were accompanied by many spirits on that walk.

by the way i cut my hair, for cancer victims. i think you don't read my blog so i'll probably post this email there.

i love you
barbara

*scroll down to see a bigger view of the picture i took at the salmon river the day my friend buried her husband in the catholic cemetery at sawyer's bar.
- posted by barbara @ 12/17/2003 07:14:00 PM