I’m tired and I’m not sure how best to tell the rest of this story, so I’ll do what I always do when something feels too big. I’ll chop it into small pieces. I’m happy Diane and Peter were part of this, and I wish Brian had been too. It still feels right that we […]
Look, I know this has become a macabre, deeply black-humored, morbidly fascinating event, but the fact that I too can laugh along with everyone else doesn’t mean I miss my father any less. But how the hell else can one cope with all this? With a straight face? I don’t think so. We filled our […]
We’ll be stopping in Nevada, Missouri on our way back to Evansville. After spending some of Thursday touring metropolitan Latham, I thought it only made sense to visit the town where my mother grew up. I haven’t been to Latham since 1985, or Nevada since the early seventies when I helped Peter drive out to […]
We’ve reserved a Chrysler Town & Country which has seats that will fold down into the floor, leaving enough room for my father, Diane, Peter and me. I did check on the cargo area, and I was assured there would be enough, not for a casket, or “casket-sized steamer trunk,” but for a “large box […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]