A difficult week, by any standard

I want to give witness to this week. It's one of those weeks that seems statistically improbable. It feels unbelievable.

I have been on the east coast for the past 5 days conducting the last events related to my mother's death. She had asked for some of her ashes to be interred at a memorial garden in her former church, back up in the northern NJ church where she still was a member, officially. Mind you, she'd retired to Virginia about 15 years ago. But, she never quite let go of the church, the Presbyterian Church at Franklin Lakes. They have since built a memorial garden for members.  The church was kind enough to allow us to hold a memorial service. We invited the local friends. It was a nice service much like the one back in June, although, this one had more of a Presbyterian focus. We buried one third of her ashes in the garden and planted a purple mum on top.

Afterwards, we had a reception at the church. That also went well. We had too much food, and they were supposed to set up the coffee makers, and they just dropped off a bag of ground coffee. Whoops.  The food was excellent (The Market Basket was the caterer - of course it was top-notch).

One third of her ashes were in Virginia, one third at the church, we had one more portion to take care of. At her request, the last third was to go to the Atlantic ocean.

Next day we took the final third of the ashes to Asbury Park to set free in the ocean. Asbury Park was significant to my mother because she grew up nearby and worked at this beach summers, as a teenager. It was lovely weather, and it was not too hard to find a quiet spot to sprinkle the bag of gray ash into the cool clear waters. 

What was unbelievable was that while we drove to Asbury Park, the vet where our cat was being housed called. Dmitri, our kitty, was not doing well - difficulty breathing with swelling of the tongue and throat. They gave him a shot of cortisone and oxygen. I told them no heroics...after all the cat was 16 years old and had not been doing all that well at home. Forty five minutes later, the vet called back. No improvement; it was likely he had a tumor pressing on his throat. So, I took a deep breath and told the vet that it was time.

So, I buried my mother, I put my cat down in the last few days.  

How shall I top off this wonderful week?

With a mammogram.

Can't get better than that, I tell ya.