Hi Friends,

I think I last left you as we were heading toward Sioux City, Iowa for my mom’s funeral. It was now Tuesday morning, the 5th of January. If you’ll remember from our previous episodes, none of us had done much sleeping since Sunday. In fact, my brother is now writing a book called “101 Ways to Sleep on a Train — Subtitle: None of Which Work!”

Anyway, we pulled into town and the Holiday Inn was right off the freeway overlooking the Missouri River. Nice view. We had arranged to meet my sister, Diana, and her husband, Carl, at the Perkins Restaurant right next to the hotel. We braced ourselves for the popcicle blast that was waiting for us between the car and our food and scurried in to eat.

It was so good to see them both! They live in VA and I’m in UT, so naturally it’s been hard at times to arrange visits. We all sat around the table talking and laughing. I’m not sure the other patrons were ready to be in uproarville so early in the morning. I was definitely in sleep silly mode, that’s for sure. You know, like when you start laughing at how hysterical the menus are or the tableware or the sugar packets? I know you’ve been there.

Anyway, Diana thought I was acting a little more strangely than normal. This is the big sister who told me my whole life that I was a “changling.” I defended myself by saying that I had just spent two days on the train and had no sleep the night before that even. Why does she have to be so logical? She said, “How do you figure two days? You were on the train for 24 hours.”

“I don’t care. There were two darks and to me that means two days. We tried to sleep through both of them and couldn’t.”

“Two darks? Is that how  you tell time now?” The whole table erupted in laughter at my logic, but they were as sleep deprived as I was.  I definitely didn’t think it was as funny as sugar packets. I’ll have to scan in the card my brother later sent me. It shows a picture of a crabby little girl on the front with the caption, “Nothing good can be expected of a day that starts by getting out of bed.”  Inside he wrote, “This is you after ‘two darks.’”  What a brat he is. See how I got short-changed in the sibling department??  I hope I’m a changling after all.

Now back to business. We had originally wanted to hold the funeral on Tuesday, but moved it to Wednesday so that we could have a viewing the night before. We were working with a really tight schedule because several family members had flown in and had time restrictions on their flights.

I asked how the arrangements were going since she got there the day before. “We have a problem, ” Diana began. “Mom isn’t  here yet.”

“What?? They were supposed to fly her in yesterday!”

Now my first piece of advice, my friends, is to always die where you want to be buried. It’s just not funny when they misplace someone like your mother.

Here’s what happened: My mom had a prepaid funeral policy (thank goodness) that had arrangements when someone had to be transported home. They worked with a funeral home in Salt Lake who would take care of the arrangements before she was flown home. Now the problem was that nobody goes anywhere without a death certificate. If I thought losing my driver’s license had messed up my life, nothing compared to not having the death certificate close by.  It had already been 5 days since she passed, but the attending hospice doctor hadn’t signed it yet. It could even be done electronically — no pen to paper required. He didn’t have to sit in his basement with a little mimeograph machine cranking out death certificates in his spare time. He is a hospice doctor! He couldn’t find the time to do it? It’s never come up before? Now according to the SLC funeral home, they say he got miffed because they called him at 7:30 in the morning and then he hung up on them and wouldn’t sign it right away. I got to work back at the hotel calling the hospital and the hospice people and the funeral home. Finally it got signed and she was cleared for takeoff … sort of.

We had to move the funeral now to Thursday so that the viewing could be on Wednesday. Time was getting dicey.  Plus the nice ladies of the church were going to prepare the dinner after the funeral. We had to keep postponing their plans, but they were really sweet about it.  Wednesday came along and still no Mom!  I think by this point she must have really been laughing at us up there. At least I hope so. I know my Dad would have gotten a kick out of it. But then, Mom always wanted a nice funeral and she had it all planned out and stuff. She firmly believed that you were permitted to view your own funeral and she wanted it to be good.

Now the funeral home (and they were really trying, honest) promised us that it would all come off if we moved it to Thursday. That meant no viewing on Wednesday night and we’d just have to do on before the funeral itself. Not ideal for getting people there who couldn’t come to the funeral, but we didn’t have a choice. More calling had to be done to let people know when it was despite what they had read in the papers.

Another thing that was really inconvenient during this was that I didn’t have use of any transportation. My cousin had rented a van in Omaha, but he and my brother were always traipsing off without Daniel or me. And my sister and brother-in-law had come down with some sort of gombu as did my brother. I knew I was going to get what they all had, but at least it held off till I got home. Anybody want my cough? It’s the only souvenir I brought back, but I’ll share!

Wednesday night, in the middle of a vicious blizzard, the brave lad from the funeral home drove down to Omaha to pick Mom up. Driving back was an amazing feat, bless his heart. I shuddered to think of him and Mom going off the road somewhere along the way, but they both arrived safely. I can’t tell you what a relief that was!

Well, I’ve rambled on a lot today. I’ll pick it up, hopefully tomorrow, when I tell you about the funeral itself. Oh no. Not even that could go right on this trip!!

In the meantime, it’s dark outside. The day must be over.