Sunday morning I was up at 6AM and had no pain but the poison ivy was bad so I had to start meds for it. I had a lot of jobs to do before I got outside to mow at 8AM. I was only able to do the yard but not at the barn as I had to finish by 11AM, so I’d have time to get ready to go to the memorial.
I found a platter but not the one I had been looking for and got the zucchini bread laid out. I thought it looked a bit plain so I collected flowers from the New Herb garden and flowerbeds. I made a little collection in the center with a flower frog I had and laid the rest around on the bread. I’d also made an ingredient list for those with allergies.
The widow friend picked me up at 12:15PM and we headed to her daughter’s farm. Her daughter would be driving us there.
The memorial was being held at a local family sugar house/farm and they’d set up 2 tables with guest books to sign or leave stories in. The main table had a cake of the farm and had a quote from the deceased as he was dying.
He was a very passionate bagpiper and there were 3 bagpipers there, one his mentor, and they would be playing at various times through the service.
There was a huge tent set up for shade and another large tent for all the food that arrived. One had to bring their own chairs for under the tent and we were glad we got there early because there were lots of people crowded around outside the tents in the sun. It was a lovely summer day but in the high 80’sF.
My guess is there were around 300 people all told. He had touched many, many lives through his life as a mainstay for 2 area churches, sang in a choir, played violin in the Pioneer Valley Symphony, played all over the area as a solo bagpiper, taught violin and bagpipe lessons, involved in area homeschooling events when his children were younger, had stalls at local farmers markets, and worked for local businesses part time. He also taught riflery skills and flew model airplanes.
He grew up on a farm and eventually left to start his own after he was married. From the program:
“He was either a “musical farmer” or a “farming musician”. It depended on the day.”
They raised Registered Romney sheep and a large vegetable garden and he made things after spinning the wool to yarn. He had taught himself blacksmithing, tooling leather, knitting, model airplanes, gardening, and made premier bagpipe cane bass drone reeds. He was a master of all these skills.
My favorite part of the service was when his wife read a letter sent to him by a former bagpipe student, and then she read a long eulogy she’d written of his life and stories about him.
She explained that they didn’t leave people out of the loop when he was dying; he was diagnosed in early June and was on hospice the first of July and gone on the 6th. He had little pain and continued to do lessons through June. And then he was gone. After the service we sat and enjoyed the many, many different foods that people brought.
We didn’t know very many of the people there, and 1 other mom from our Mom’s Night Out homeschooling group came later. So I was glad we 3 were there from our group.
We left late afternoon, and I got home just in time to feed the dying cat at 3 minutes to 6PM. I went to bed at 9PM, but the meds for the poison ivy made it hard to get to sleep. It was 12:30AM before I dropped off, an extremely long hard day.
On Monday my general helper is coming to work in the gardens but I doubt I’ll be able too. I need to do laundry, clean up the kitchen, pay bills and I have PT late morning. I expect I’ll be back in bed after that, with very little sleep on Sunday night. One more heat wave with humidity arrives on Monday and will stay for the better part of the week.