doing it all for the redhead, part two
July 30, 2012

After locating the graves of several relatives at the cemetery, Spouse was fretting about finding the memorial, since he knew it was out in the country, and frankly, "out in the country" scares the shit out of him. He wanted to make a test run to make sure he could find it. We got a little confused about the directions we had been given, which were a bit imprecise. Since I did grow up in the area, I knew how to get to the highway we were looking for, but he has an innate distrust of my (or anyone's) ability to navigate, so he was resisting me.

I finally got him believe me enough to get on 34 and head toward the river, and I figured out how to enter the one known intersection I had in my directions into the Garmin and get usable navigation. Which worked, and got us straightened out. But by the time we got all the way out there, it seemed silly to turn around and go back, especially since we had to go down Spouse's worst nightmare--a gravel road. So we were loads early, but nobody seemed to mind. The family that was hosting the memorial was that of Uncle's lifelong best friend, and they were very welcoming. We all visited for a while at the big house before trooping over to the actual location of the event--a beautiful new cabin on a pond, in the timber back of a cornfield. Uncle would have been in heaven. The cabin berlongs to a banker, so it is pretty lush, as rustic retreats go. Air conditioning, thick, springy carpet, granite countertops, and a beuatiful bathroom. One cool thing--it had been designed for to be easy access for people with chairs or walkers; that made it easy for mom. When they built it, there was an effort to make sure that it could be enjoyed by both the owner's mom and by Uncle--sadly, neither lived to see it finished.

The event consisted of several different parts: a cookout--hotdogs, sloppy joes, fresh tomatoes, berries and watermelon, the traditional "grandma jello", cold salads, and some monstrously good desserts. Then everyone sat around awhile visiting and looking as pictures and reminiscing. After that, we did a balloon launch--everyone wrote a note for Uncle and tied it to a balloon. One of the grandkids of Uncle's best friend scanned a zillion snapshots and put together a beautiful slideshow with a tear-jerky country music soundtrack. And then we eulogized a bit--sat around telling stories about Uncle's devilish sense of humor and angelic heart. It was about eight when Spouse and I started our goodbyes; we wanted to get off the gravel and onto the pavement before dark, and we knew the goodbyes were going to take a while. It was our last chance to see everyone, as DC & family were all spending the night at the cabin, and my folks were going back to their motel in my hometown. They were going to go to my great-nephew's first birthday party on Sunday.

The goodbyes with DC and her husband were hard--I love them so much. I need to come up with an alias for him--maybe I'll call him The Architect--that's his job. I know--AA, for Arizona Architect. Anyway, AA is a treasure. He has always taken such good care of Uncle, and he has a biting sense of humor that I just love. He knows how much I love his wife's family, and I think we just appreciate each other. And of course, as DC and I were saying...we never want to let each other go, but we've spent our whole lives being ripped apart over and over again. It was so special to get to spend a few days with them--they are so precious to me.

Spouse and I went back to the hotel, ate his warmed over pizza from Friday night, and went to bed. Got up on Sunday and did our packng, checked out, and made another short stop at the casino before doing something we've never done before--we took the bridge across at Burlington and went up on the Illinois side, rather than go up 61 and cross at the Quad Cities. That's how much we didn't want to even drive through my hometown.

Oh, yeah. I should probably mention that neither of my brothers, or any of their kids, showed up for the memorial.

It was a long drive home; we didn't hurry. We stopped in Rock Falls for an early lunch, we stopped in Rockford to buy some groceries, and we took the backroads home, winding up through Illinois. Which was very fine and pleasant until we got a few miles from home and got stuck on the wrong side of a stalled freight train. Had to backtrack a few miles in order to get across the tracks & on our way again. We hit it hard at home, hauling in, putting away, sorting and washing clothes, and even some housework. We were both beat, but it all needed to be done. We had cold sandwiches for dinner and he hit the rack early while I puttered around on the computer, talked to my mom on the phone (she called to say they were home okay), and got things set up for this morning.

Well, there's my painfully therapeutic recap of my weekend. I guess I'm glad I got it off of my chest. Now, all I have to do is get the rest of my photos straightened out and get some more emails full of piccies off to Auntie.