Tag Archives: Dad

Designing Dad’s Headstone

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After my father died I knew that we’d need to think about a headstone, but was too busy dealing with insurance stuff as well as my own grieving process to want to handle it right away. I sort of thought it would be good to have a headstone installed for his birthday and then maybe go back to Elgin around that time to see it with my family but that day came and went with no headstone or plan to order one.

Finally, my mom and brother started the process by visiting a few headstone vendors in the Elgin area. They settled on the vendor they liked and chose a size and color they liked for the headstone. When I was back in Elgin at the end of August last year, Mom wanted me to go with her to see the one she and my brother picked out. I was completely up for it because the headstone place was across the street from Elgin’s coolest cemetery.

Mom showed me the stone they’d chosen and we began the ordering process. All went smoothly until we were asked to choose a design. I assumed that there were a set number of designs and we would choose one of them but the salesperson said we could have whatever we wanted for a design. It was a lot to think about so we went home and talked about it.

We thought about what was important to Dad. We thought perhaps sheaves of wheat to symbolize his life as a child growing up on a farm. We thought about an anchor to symbolize his time in the U.S. Navy. We thought about crosses because he was brought up a Christian. We were solemn because this was a solemn task.

To break the solemnity I laughed and wondered aloud what about bluebirds? Mom shook her head. Not bluebirds. No, people are going to see this. It is in a cemetery. I assured her I was only joking, but my husband thought it was a good idea and so did my ex-sister-in-law. Later when I asked my brother about the idea, he liked the bluebirds. We still had to convince Mom. We assured her that no one would understand the bluebirds except his close family. We threw in an anchor and ribbon for good measure. She finally said she was okay with it.

After several back and forth emails with the headstone company they sent me a draft of the design. Above his name and birth and death dates was a ribbon being held by two flying birds. In the middle of the ribbon hung an anchor. It was perfect. Everyone agreed. We told the headstone folks to go ahead and use that design.

My brother visited the grave recently and uploaded a photograph of the headstone to Facebook. Here is a copy.

Dad's Bluebird Headstone
Dad’s Bluebird Headstone — Click the image to make it bigger

And in case you are wondering, why bluebirds? — shh, don’t tell mom I told you that he, like Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail, had a pair of them them tattooed on his chest. (And he was proud of them).

Many thanks to Elgin Granite Works for the fantastic job they did on the headstone, for making sure the Military plaque on the back was put in place properly and for keeping me updated on the process.

Stewing Away on the Back Burner

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I know I should let it go. There’s nothing to be gained except a small satisfaction for me and perhaps my brother. My mom wants to just forget about it.

But I don’t want to let it go. I want an apology. A real apology, not an offhanded remark about “getting off on the wrong feet”.

And then there is the fact that perhaps there is nothing to apologize for. That we were hyper-sensitive and that any rational person would have let it slide. Perhaps we should have not gone to the funeral home the day Dad died, but waited until the next day. But we were ready for it to be over. We’d already spent 4 and a half days knowing that this was how it would probably turn out.

Here’s what happened. (I know I’ve mentioned this on Facebook and have told many friends about it — so feel free to ignore this post if you already are sick of hearing me talk about it).

In a nutshell, we believe that the young man who helped us plan my father’s funeral was rude to us in the initial moments of the planning process. I called him on it and he changed his attitude. Perhaps that is all that needed to be done. However this was not someone selling us a wrench at Ace Hardware. This was someone who was supposed to help us deal with the grief of losing a loved-one.

I stewed about this for about a month, then wrote a letter to the director (who was out of town when we used the services of his funeral home). I’ll post the letter (names removed) after the break.

When another month passed and I’d not heard back from the funeral home director, I sent him an email. I never got a response to the email.

I sort of figured that if he got the letter and the email and didn’t respond, it was not worth dealing with anymore. I’d gotten it off my chest and that is all that mattered. I nearly forgot about it until my mom callled me a few days ago and said that the funeral home director left a message on her answering machine. I asked her what he said and she said he wanted her to call him back but she was reluctant to do so. She thought she’d ramble on and make no sense. I said I’d send her a copy of the letter I’d sent him and then she’d know what was in it.

That evening I accessed Mom’s voice-mail account — we had it set up for that when she was here and I was curious to know what he said). Here is, verbatim, what the funeral director said:

Yes, [Mom’s Name],  this is [funeral home director’s name] of [name of funeral home]. I’ve been meaning to get ahold of you but I’ve…I’ve…it’s just been on my back burner and I really wanted to talk to you regarding a letter that Dona had sent me regarding the funeral services for your husband. I just wanted to kinda touch base with you and I had a couple of questions for you. So if you could, at your convenience, give me a call back [phone number] I’d appreciate it and I’d like to speak to you. Thank you.

The next evening I called my mom to see if she’d called the funeral home back. She hadn’t and pretty much said she didn’t want to and didn’t know what the big deal was. Maybe the person who helped us was young and inexperienced. She said it was part of the past and didn’t want to deal with it any more.

I can completely understand her point. After all, I was already done with it before she called to say they had called. But now I’m upset again. Upset that it took him 70 days to call. Just another, in my opinion, insult to us.

I may call him myself to tell him that Mom’s done with it and doesn’t want to reopen old wounds. I may tell him that I’m disappointed that it took so long for him to contact us. I may write a review on Yelp. Or I may just sweep it under the carpet and move on.

There are not too many other options for funeral homes in my home town. This family owns the two main ones and as Pastor Keith said on Facebook the other day, they’re the “biggest game in town”. I don’t know what we’ll do when we need funeral home services again — many many years from now of course.

Letter I wrote after the break.

Continue reading Stewing Away on the Back Burner →

Found Items: 2. The Nite Owl

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For the last decade or so of my father’s life his bedroom was his sanctuary. He spent more time in his room than out of it — and not always asleep. I once asked him what he did when he went to bed at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. He said he usually lay in bed thinking.

Dad’s room was pretty much off-limits to anyone not invited in, but the stench of unwashed old-age was enough to not want to be invited in. Occasionally my dad would ask me into his room to look, for the umpteenth time, at the photograph of the navy ship he’d spent 4 years on or to look at something he’d found among his trinkets. I was never very curious about what was in his room — I couldn’t imagine there was anything of interest I’d not seen many times before.

I couldn’t have been more wrong as I found out after my father’s death in October. I found his father’s wallet, still with the cards and photographs he carried while alive. I found his wedding ring that my mother thought was lost. I also found a ziplock bag of things that belonged to my Uncle Don, my father’s brother-in-law and best friend until Don’s death in 1963.

Some of the things in the bag are bizarre — a hat with a tassel and matching purple satin sash from some honorary Moose Lodge event. Some are historical — correspondence between my Uncle Don and the War Department in 1945. Some possibly valuable — an unopened pack of Milwaukee Road playing cards.

My favorite of the trinkets, however, is the plastic box of key-chains. When I opened the box, the top key-chain was one I recalled from my childhood. Probably not the same key-chain, but I had one just like it.

It is a red and white plastic key-chain shaped like an owl. The red part (the body of the owl) separates from the white part (the eyes and tail) to make two key-chains. The white part also glows in the dark. I think the reason for the two parts is because two keys used to be required for the ignition and trunk, so this way you could keep your car running and get something out of the trunk. The back of the key-chain advertises a store called “Rorry’s: Apparel for women who care”. I vaguely remember Rorry’s — I wonder if there was one in Elgin.

Nite Owl Key-chain
Nite Owl Key-chain Rorry's Apparel for Women who Care
Nite Owl Key-chain package
Nite Owl Key-chain

Clare loves owls so, for Christmas, I parted with the Nite Owl key-chain and placed it in her stocking. I feel good that a memory of mine is now a concrete object for her.