I made up a new playlist for myself in iTunes to try to help get my head screwed on straight after all that’s happened this week, Emotion is exhausting; so is grief, and so is dwelling on crap from the past (this is not all about Mom’s passing, but all the other issues and hurts that get fluffed up and revisited.Stuff between different people, from long ago.

I hope some good comes of all of the crap I pulled on various family members. I’m the emotional one and it was hard to keep my junk dialled back. It was really better that I had all that time alone in the house, because nobody needed to be around me while I re-arranged things to try to make the house look more normal after the end of each day of sorting, tossing, and packing. Timmy and I spent the most time in the house, and the others were there as they were able. The first few days were the hardest, because
we were trying to clean as well as make a start on clearing out the things that most needed to go first: Mom’s clothes. Stuff that smelled of her. Perishable food from the fridge that was there from when I last visited several weeks ago. Ehhhh.

I had a similar playlist called “Music for Moms,” but that was before, for Mom.This is now, for me.

And so the first song on the playlist, probably not by accident, is “Walk On.”  It was sorted backwards by song alphabetically, and that was the first one that “fit” my idea for “C’Mon, Get Happy.” Another one is ‘Teach Your Children,” because it always reminded me of Ghibran’s “On Children” that was one of the readings for the party. And oh, yes, “Starry Starry Night,” because Mom loved that song and had a Don MacLean cassette tape. And now that I’m home at last, I’m in a “Hallelujah” mood (music at least,
if not the words, which are actually kind of sad).

Next on the agenda: getting back on my feet and moving forward. Stuff to be done. Walk on.

“You’re packin’ a suitcase for a place none of us has been..”  oh, yeah.
“Weathered faces, lined in pain, are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hands…” oh, hell yeah. 

iTunes: U2: Walk On: All That You Can’t Leave Behind [4:56]
iTunes: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Teach Your Children: Déjà Vu [2:54]
iTunes: Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah (Live): Live at Sin-é (Legacy Edition) [9:15]

Technorati Tags: iPod, iTunes

My time staying in Mom’s little house is drawing to a close – tomorrow I return home, and someone else will finish sorting, tossing and reminiscing over photos, knick-knacks, and clippings that fall out of books. I’ve got a couple of boxes left to pack up, while my sister Timmy has been packing up the family china for me.

Actually, Mom had two or three sets of china from different family members; this one is the prettiest, but not the most valuable, because althought it’s Haviland, it’s “seconds.” That’s all my maternal grandparents could afford. You can see little flaws in the porcelain, and some of the pieces are missing, but that doesn’t reduce its value for me: Mom loved it and I love it too. It has little pink rosebuds and is improbably delicate for a rough-handed tomboy like me.

She had some beautiful things, but I’m struck by how many of them were damaged at some time in the past, and carefully repaired. There were many more beautiful things in the house years ago, but some of them actually belonged to an aunt and were sold to help keep her and her disabled son going. Mom worked hard and sacrificed to take care of other family members over the years, and all of that labor and worry resulted in a few knick-knacks that meant the most to her. She made and saved baby clothes, she kept some of her mother’s and sisters linens, she glued broken cups and steins together and used them for something else, and she kept broken crystal tucked away in a cupboard rather than throwing it out.

She had beautiful things, but they represented more than monetary value to her and they didn’t become garbage once they got damaged. She fixed them, when possible, because they represented people she loved, good times long past, and because she was a Depression kid who never threw anything useful out.

Now we live in an age when everything is disposable. “Use it and lose it” seems to be the motto many people live by. She found this modern world more and more incomprehensible, even as her vision faded and she wasn’t able to read the newspaper without help.

She held the line for a long time against loss and decay and forgetfulness, and maybe it’s better that she won’t be around to see how things will turn out in the years to come.

We three sisters have pretty much gone through Mom’s house and sorted things into piles and stacks; we keep finding things I call “landmines,” that have some emotional or sentimental value.

For instance, I found myself crying over a blackened skillet today. Also, a boxful of old photos and cards yielded a Father’s Day card I sent to Pop in about 1967, the year before he died. I was staying in Grand Junction with my godparents while he was building my playhouse.

Re-connecting with my childhood, after not seeing these objects that represent specific events in so long, is proving to be a pretty… fraught process. It’s not so much that Mom is dead, but that much of my past has died, too. I was expecting to grieve for my mom, but thought I was “over” my childhood.

Not so much over the childhood, however.

Anyway, I’ve got a couple of boxes to pack yet and some loads to run in the dishwasher. Man, Mom never threw anything out, no matter how beat up or broken or half-melted, as long as she could find another purpose for it. My niece Holly came over today and was quite happy to claim some classic old kitchen implements and a beautiful Hamilton Beach mixer that’s probably older than I am. It was a little too heavy for Mom to deal with in her later years, but Holly will use it to make wonderful, wonderful things.
She’s a great cook and also a creative one.

Gotta run, I’ve got laundry on the line and it’s about to get dark.

Marella Elizabeth Stockdale Baker, also known as Aunt Lella and "Murph" to family and friends, went to a better place June 7, 2006.

Born in Colorado Springs, Colorado on September 2, 1915 to Charles William and Florence Jane Martin Stockdale, she was the youngest of five children.

She is survived by her daughters, Marcia "Timmy" Smith (Frank), Teresa "Tudy" McCormick, and Virginia "Ginny" Gibbs (David) .

She is also survived by granddaughters, Holly Martin, Raeanne (Rick), Heather Lloyd (Tally), Sydnee Crankshaw (Eric), and great-grandchildren Collin and Paige, Ezra and Haley Lloyd, and Alexandra Crankshaw, as well as numerous nieces, nephews, friends and neighbors.

Family and friends are invited to a Celebration of Life in Marella's back yard on Saturday, June 10, 2006 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. She will be remembered for her "first snow of winter" doughnuts, her Disappearing Cookies, and her powerful rumballs.

In lieu of flowers, please make donations in the name of Marella Baker to Care Source Hospice at 1624 East 4500 South, Salt Lake City, Utah 84117, or to the charity of your choice.

She is preceded in death by her parents, siblings, and husband, Paul Carver "Pop" Baker, and also by her best friend, Veda West of Grand Junction, CO. Marella leaves behind a legacy of compassion, talent, humor, and feistiness.

"Put the coffee on, Pop"

As you might have guessed, we lost Mom after a short illness. It all blew up very quickly and her condition kept swinging back and forth between "good, but tired and needing oxygen" to "unresponsive and mostly dead."

It's been an exhausting week and some family members weren't able to get there in time to see Mom when she was still her feisty l'il self, and so they're finding it harder. Those of us who were there pulling for her coped in our different ways with all the see-sawing.

Stress, grief, lack of sleep, and irregular meal times don't make for much clarity of thought. My poor family had to put up with me and my tendency to go in ten directions at once.

Still, one of the ideas that I had for the celebration party came off okay – we gave out little individual bedding plants to people to take home with them and plant in their gardens. I found verbena, which Mom 's own mother liked. The remainders got planted in the front bed by the step. They are growing (it's been a week now) and make the house look cheery.

When the celebration started, I was still out front sitting on a garden cart in my work clothes and hat, bagging individual cel-packs up for people who didn't want to mess up their clothes. I greeted people and escorted older folks around the uneven spots in the lawn.

My sister Timmy started things off while I showered and changed. Tudy circulated and Cousin Bill had created the memory table. It was truly a group effort and by all accounts, a huge success.

Meanwhile, my niece Raeanne had tied satin ribbons on the clotheslines to warn people about the wires, and to me they symbolized laundry on the line (Mom loved to watch laundry blowing in the breeze). Other family members found ways to pay tribute either before the celebration, or during it.

And of course, the STORIES. There was so much laughter and love that day. The neighbors all stood in a group to one side, just beaming, because they loved Mom,too. She was a fixture on her street, kind of like a public utility.

And strangely enough, the word "connections" keeps cropping up. It's obviously of great importance at this time. There have been many little signs and portents that tend to reassure us and to relay to us that we're on the right track. So many that we take a lot of comfort, although a person of more conventional beliefs would say that they are messages of comfort from God.

Okay, fine, but God's sense of humor is suspiciously familiar.

More later, but not reams and reams of stuff any sane person would label "TMI." There were just two readings – the Serenity Prayer and the passage "On Children" from Khalil Ghibran's "The Prophet."

And then the stories started. All kinds of people came forward after the family started things off with a couple of choice anecdotes.

Waiting rooms in hospitals, no matter how pleasant the view is, are not places you want to spend a lot of time.

We’re waiting. Family has been called. There are ebbs and flows. Rallies and setbacks.

We’ll see.
Via: Flickr Title: 3 south lobby By: GinnyRED57
Originally uploaded: 6 Jun ’06, 2.14pm CDT PST