Memorial Day: Remembering Mom

This last week Doug and I were able to travel to Idaho to visit my sister Judy; my 94 yr-old elderly but alert dad, Howard Hoffman; my brother Wally, who is battling skin cancer on his upper lip, and my sister Kathleen and her husband. It was a great week for family. Coming home we stopped to put some flowers on my mother's headstone, which we had not seen before. It was the first time that I have participated in that ritual, and I found it very satisfying. Walking among the headstones, reading the names of most of my uncles and aunts, my grandparents and other relatives and ancestors that I personally had met or had known during my lifetime filled me with a warm, comfortable feeling: we belong to a great group of interesting, colorful, unique and wonderful people! I could feel our family extending backward into times past and also forward with our abundant posterity. The veil between this life and what lies beyond seemed very thin. Cemeteries can be dull places when you don't know the people. But when they belong to you.... well, that is an entirely new feeling!

A snapshot of my mother Lucile, my younger sister Mary Lou, and myself. It was Mother's Day.