(Power failure for hours today, sorry about that.)
Jacqueline loved pink. I had this pink baby alpaca scarf all ready to go for her, hoping she would come home from her long hospitalization, but things weren’t looking too good. Many visits were made, and in the end, she thanked everybody, asked that we all do a good job of looking out for her husband, and then the first person I think I ever met who’d fled the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s let go of this life. We went to her funeral today.
I had never heard the story of her parents trying to sell off their belongings there in Oklahoma, setting off for California with their toddler the only way they could afford: they walked. And hitchhiked. And eventually got here, and did indeed find a job in Santa Barbara. They stayed.
The last time I’d gone to a funeral at our church, it was for Al, who’d been 96. Sitting there that day, there was a sudden severe jerk as the pew banged upwards underneath me, the left end jolting hard, immediately bolting to the right. I glanced up: the chandeliers were swinging hard, hard enough that I glanced at Mark sitting directly under one, trying to gauge whether, if it broke loose, I would have time to throw myself across the aisle and shove him out of the way in time as it fell. California earthquake building codes, please be enough! The poor speaker, terribly nervous from the moment he’d sat down before the services, seemed completely oblivious; maybe he thought it was just his knees giving way from stagefright. I managed not to suddenly giggle at the thought that the swinging chandeliers were Al waving happily goodbye to everybody.
Jacqueline didn’t go for the showmanship, I suppose one could say; the earth held still. But as her friends spoke, we were moved.
Just a quiet coming together of friends and family wishing her well along her way home.