Celebrating Hazel

Our plans for celebrating Mom's life, for sending her off, finally jelled once Anne arrived from Brazil ten days before the funeral on December 27.  We'd been mulling over the possibilities of how to celebrate this wonderful woman and as we looked over photos and recalled our favorite memories, the plan for the funeral and the burial itself came into focus.  We worked again with Bonnerup Funeral Home, as we had with Dad and Pete (and as cousin Carol had with her parents, Bill and Marge Kepple).  This time the staff person, Stephanie, was an excellent addition to the planning team, and we enjoyed her enthusiasm, attention to detail, and compassion.

Opting to find our own "urn" for Mom's cremains, I came upon the idea of a birdhouse, given Mom's lifelong love affair with all things avian.  I'd love to have had a wren house be her urn, but we needed something larger, so a bluebird house it was.  The design was simple, the wood rustic.  Yet it begged for adornment, and so just before we tucked Mom into her gravesite next to Dad, we all took a marker and wrote a final message to her.  This act was done with joy and love, all which I recorded on video.

Cousin Carol chose this time to bury her parents cremains as well, for their burial plots were adjacent Mom and Dad's.  The day (Dec. 27) was crisp and cold, though the sun shone. As we shivered, we read several poems.  These were chosen from a book Carol Kepple's great grandmother received before boarding a ship to come to America. Both poems were written by Julius Sturm in old German script.  I read them in German and then Carol read their English translations.

The English text to this I translated as follows:

Evening Song

The day fades,
The still night approaches.
Now rest, you tired hands,
Your day's work is done.
But you, dear Soul, 
Wriggle free from Earth.
Lift yourself upward and
Slip onto God's lap.
May your life's desires,
Your love, fly onward
To where dark hills give way
And reveal Heaven.

This second poem I titled Tender Parting

The highest happiness has no songs
The deepest pain has no sound
Each mirrors the other
In thawing drops that fall
Such quiet tears
As the greatest happiness and deepest suffering
Transform themselves into love
Reveling in God's eternity