Dear Mack,

My guess is that you are now puzzling over the ultimate puzzle, deriving the simultaneous equations in n dimensions that would explain how it is that you can still *be*, though your body has expired. And how it can be that your treasured 1950s high school math text harbored not a clue about this larger reality? However, if you think about it, the protagonist of your other favorite book, Flatland, one A Squared, did once try to explain this to you. Remember when he described the visitation of a 3-dimensional sphere as it passed through the two-dimensional space of his native land?

Those of us remaining in 3-D while you hover in the nth are left to ponder and process the entangled threads of existence that we are woven into. We are left to follow the threads, or not, back through time, to solve the puzzles of our lives, or not, and vow to make better places for those that follow us, or not. Despite the ancestral psychodramas that we get entangled in, we know somewhere inside ourselves that, in fact, all we do is the best we can.

Mack, I want you to know that I am grateful to you for co-creating with Helen my best friend Michael, whose essence is the distillation of much the best of both of you. He has unraveled so much, and he daily makes a better place for all around him. I can suppose that you knew he was coming to visit you again, and timed your departure to coincide, looking to minimize the burden all around. Michael loves you, as do Joan, Brian, and Peter. My wish is that your departure can ease all their burdens, that they can reconcile their different ways of trying to take care of you, and simply grieve your passing together.

Good bye Mack. I’ll long remember your math puzzles, your warm greeting when I arrived at your home last July when Helen passed, and your unique semi-stuttering speech and oblique wit.

Oh yes: You’ll be delighted to know that Oracle was up 37 cents on your last day!

..Dan

Dear Mack,

My guess is that you are now puzzling over the ultimate puzzle, deriving the simultaneous equations in n dimensions that would explain how it is that you can still *be*, though your body has expired. And how it can be that your treasured 1950s high school math text harbored not a clue about this larger reality? However, if you think about it, the protagonist of your other favorite book, Flatland, one A Squared, did once try to explain this to you. Remember when he described the visitation of a 3-dimensional sphere as it passed through the two-dimensional space of his native land?

Those of us remaining in 3-D while you hover in the nth are left to ponder and process the entangled threads of existence that we are woven into. We are left to follow the threads, or not, back through time, to solve the puzzles of our lives, or not, and vow to make better places for those that follow us, or not. Despite the ancestral psychodramas that we get entangled in, we know somewhere inside ourselves that, in fact, all we do is the best we can.

Mack, I want you to know that I am grateful to you for co-creating with Helen my best friend Michael, whose essence is the distillation of much the best of both of you. He has unraveled so much, and he daily makes a better place for all around him. I can suppose that you knew he was coming to visit you again, and timed your departure to coincide, looking to minimize the burden all around. Michael loves you, as do Joan, Brian, and Peter. My wish is that your departure can ease all their burdens, that they can reconcile their different ways of trying to take care of you, and simply grieve your passing together.

Good bye Mack. I’ll long remember your math puzzles, your warm greeting when I arrived at your home last July when Helen passed, and your unique semi-stuttering speech and oblique wit.

Oh yes: You’ll be delighted to know that Oracle was up 37 cents on your last day!

..Dan

Diane’s voice embellishes her wonderful writing. I wish you all could have heard her last night.

Last nights service for my father in Matt’s words: “More than exhausting, it was draining.”

Eulogy: Malcolm Geeslin Miller
08/31/1914-02/02/2007

My father in law spoke to us in riddles, but there was a period in the 70s when he was pushed to change by his early retirement from Westinghouse and we were young adults trying to figure out what the heck we were doing.

Mack and Helen would drive out to Boston regularly where 3 or 4 of his children were residing at any point, and he would graciously participate in something we called non-optional group therapy, where we would get together to dissect our hang-ups and blame our elders. Mack acknowledged at that time some of the ways in which he had been not an easy father and joined in a hippie generation dialogue I imagine and hope he never forgot.

But in later life, Mack retreated from public introspection and again engaged mostly around mathematics, mechanics or finances. Mack didn’t exactly know what to say to his grandson Matthew, who didn’t speak any of those. There was one moment, though, when their thoughts connected.

Matt was 8 when he suddenly understood what a pulley could do for you. He wanted one very badly. Shortly, a large and shiny pulley arrived in the mail from Mack. Bolted to Matt’s bedroom ceiling it allowed him to hoist himself up into the air to perch and read for hours.

That’s one of my fond memories from Matthew’s childhood, which was so very different from his grandfather’s. For instance, my son’s Dad broke through that same ceiling a few years later to build him a loft with a skylight. Mack, on the other hand, built himself an unheated garage to provide sleeping space there in the cold prairie winters with some of his siblings. Prior to that, his parents, Archie and Jesse and their 7 children slept together in their 3 room rural Kansas house.

One of Mack’s younger sisters Betty Jean, who idolized him, told a story about Mack’s coming to her with a thread and needle when he cut his arm through to the bone with his knife during a hunting accident. He was about 16, she about 12, and he talked her through sewing him back together.

Mack’s children plan to drive his body home to Latham Kansas this week, to lay him between his grandfather Ackless who fought in the civil war, and his mother Jesse who died when Mack was too young a man. It was a hard life in Latham, but it was part of what made Mack who he was, brave, competent, frugal, an extraordinary improviser, always generous with his helping hand, full of integrity by which I mean speaking and living his values, a man of halting words but vigorous effective action who mowed his lawn and cleaned his gutters to the end.

Diane M Canning
02/05/2007

Diane’s voice embellishes her wonderful writing. I wish you all could have heard her last night.

Last nights service for my father in Matt’s words: “More than exhausting, it was draining.”

Eulogy: Malcolm Geeslin Miller
08/31/1914-02/02/2007

My father in law spoke to us in riddles, but there was a period in the 70s when he was pushed to change by his early retirement from Westinghouse and we were young adults trying to figure out what the heck we were doing.

Mack and Helen would drive out to Boston regularly where 3 or 4 of his children were residing at any point, and he would graciously participate in something we called non-optional group therapy, where we would get together to dissect our hang-ups and blame our elders. Mack acknowledged at that time some of the ways in which he had been not an easy father and joined in a hippie generation dialogue I imagine and hope he never forgot.

But in later life, Mack retreated from public introspection and again engaged mostly around mathematics, mechanics or finances. Mack didn’t exactly know what to say to his grandson Matthew, who didn’t speak any of those. There was one moment, though, when their thoughts connected.

Matt was 8 when he suddenly understood what a pulley could do for you. He wanted one very badly. Shortly, a large and shiny pulley arrived in the mail from Mack. Bolted to Matt’s bedroom ceiling it allowed him to hoist himself up into the air to perch and read for hours.

That’s one of my fond memories from Matthew’s childhood, which was so very different from his grandfather’s. For instance, my son’s Dad broke through that same ceiling a few years later to build him a loft with a skylight. Mack, on the other hand, built himself an unheated garage to provide sleeping space there in the cold prairie winters with some of his siblings. Prior to that, his parents, Archie and Jesse and their 7 children slept together in their 3 room rural Kansas house.

One of Mack’s younger sisters Betty Jean, who idolized him, told a story about Mack’s coming to her with a thread and needle when he cut his arm through to the bone with his knife during a hunting accident. He was about 16, she about 12, and he talked her through sewing him back together.

Mack’s children plan to drive his body home to Latham Kansas this week, to lay him between his grandfather Ackless who fought in the civil war, and his mother Jesse who died when Mack was too young a man. It was a hard life in Latham, but it was part of what made Mack who he was, brave, competent, frugal, an extraordinary improviser, always generous with his helping hand, full of integrity by which I mean speaking and living his values, a man of halting words but vigorous effective action who mowed his lawn and cleaned his gutters to the end.

Diane M Canning
02/05/2007

I like Jen’s comment. Judging by everyone’s reaction around here, I guess this burial method is rather novel.

Anyway, I talked to both funeral homes this morning and the current plan is to pick-up my father in a rented mini van (extended version as the casket is 7’9″ long) on Wednesday morning, and drive him to Eldorado, Ks.. Wednesday night Diane and I (and maybe Peter, maybe not) will find a motel leaving the casket in the van in the motel parking lot. Thursday morning we’ll drive the thirty miles to Latham for the burial.

Sunday morning, early, I went back to Deaconess Hospital, walked through the familiar foyer, and the lobby where I’d waited, slept and composed my thoughts, and up the back steps to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. I found Genny (short for Genevieve), one of Mack’s many nurses, tending to a patient on dialysis. I thanked her for what she’d done for my father and she bounced it back like the professional she is – thanking me and reassuring me that Mack was in a better place with God. Around here folks share their religion like last night’s football score.

I left and then dropped-in on Peter, and then Jeff and Karen, and then drove back for a 9 AM breakfast at the Marriott with Diane. The rest of the day Diane and I stayed close, meandering the back streets, napping together in the car in our favorite coffee house’s parking lot, and stopping at Borders for books. At night we met Peter and Brian for dinner and then headed back to Bellemeade to collect clothes to dress my father for our trip west. Tough stuff, sorting through his torn and stained jeans, finding the right flannel shirt, gathering underwear that wouldn’t be embarrassing to hand to the funeral director and his son. My depression-era father wore clothes until the bitter end, not unlike, now that I think about it, my friend and camping companion, Mark Queijo.

I was doing okay in this house of memories until I saw tears streaming down Diane’s cheeks as we walked together into my mother’s rooms where she wasn’t, and my father’s bedroom where he wasn’t. Too much past tense in that house.

Today, we’ll finish preparations for tonight’s service — Sarah’s coming to play her cello – and I’ll call Kansas to tell them we’ll be there to bury my father on Thursday.

****************

Dan called this morning to say he’d slipped on the ice on his driveway and broken his leg.

Last night Jeff and Karen took us to the Firefly Grill. We ate fried okra, fried green tomatoes, fried grits, pulled pork, grilled chicken salad, tomato soup (with a tiny cheese sandwich floating in the center) and a crab cake, all finished with a slice of rich coconut cream pie drizzeled with caramel. We touched on family issues, some messy ones, but most importantly Jeffrey helped Matt understand the complex man who was his grandfather.

Today is our day of rest.

Written by Diane.

I believe our impossibly busy time has come to an end. We arrived in Evansville early and drove directly to the same dirt-cheap place my sister contracted for my mother’s cremation – Gelham Funeral Home run by a father and son and offering services way below scale. We filled out the necessary forms, chatted about family, and then both Stan and Matt helped plan the next phase – our journey to Kansas on Tuesday. In addition to helping us understand our expected costs, we learned that mini vans with bucket seats were big enough for a single coffin and three people, that Suburbans, though monstrous are too short, and that cargo vans seat only two. We haven’t yet decided how many of us are taking this trip, though my older brother no longer refers to me, the dreamer up of this plan, as his “psycho brother.” So, there will be a minimum of two but possibly four travelers.

After we returned to the Marriott, I called Carlson Funeral Home in Eldorado, Kansas, and talked to Lionell Butts. He didn’t immediately understand my plan, but once he understood that my father was already in a casket and that there would be no service at his place, he seemed to cotton to the idea. It appears that the costs in Kansas will be minimal and we’ll be driving my father to his grave. But then what? Lowering him into the ground ourselves? That part, at the moment, is unclear.

Diane and I fly to Evansville today, leaving this morning at 9 AM. Matthew joins us in the afternoon, and Brian tomorrow. Monday night we’ll have a similar memorial service for my father as we did for my mother at Patchwork Central . Mostly friends remembering.Wednesday, if all goes according to my plan, Diane and Peter and I will rent a truck and drive my father out to Latham, Kansas and bury him in his family cemetery.

I talked to Steve McCune, the man in charge of hiring the “grave digger,” and he informed me that lot B is owned by my great grandfather and that’s where Mack’s mother, grandfather, grandfather’s brother and someone else by the name of Jones is buried. After we inter my father there will still be three available spaces.If you want to make contributions in the name of Malcolm, please send them to Patchwork. I am thankful for all the phone calls yesterday. I didn’t have time to return many (any?), but I am grateful for the support. I plan on updating the blog as we move about the midwest.

 

I like that thought – rest in peace. I’m not sure who gets to rest now, but this morning at about 5:30 AM my father, Malcolm G Miller, died in his hospital bed with his son, Peter, by his side. Peter held his hand and whispered words of affection in Mack’s ear.

My father’s great passions were the stock market and hard work. Even at ninety-two he mowed his lawn and both his neighbors’ lawns. On Thanksgiving my father cleaned out his last gutter and sometime shortly before he entered the hospital he traded his last stock.

I’ve got nothing left. Anyone out there want to contribute something for the masses? Otherwise, I’ll post more spinning daisies and cat’s cozying up to warm fires.

One fine video of the behind-the-scenes rehearsal and performance of Schubert’s “The Trout.” (Itzhak Perlman, Daniel Barenboim, Jacqueline Du Pré, Zubin Mehta and Pinchas Zukerman)