by James Glaser
May 14, 2004

When someone close to you dies after a long illness you are totally exhausted and just want to have a long rest, but that isn't possible because you have to get it together and organize a funeral or in my case a memorial service.

It seems to me that all of my neighbors already know this, so in order to give me energy for this task they have showered me with every treat you can think of. I had people bring over pans of fudge, jelly rolls, brownies, chocolate chip bars and cookies, pasta salads, apple pies, and some stuff that tasted great, but has no name that I know of.

Today is Charmaine's Memorial Service down in Blackduck. I am giving a talk, my son Garrett is speaking, my daughter Whitney is going to sing and we have a traditional Indian religious leader coming from Canada to give an Indian service. Correction, at 10;30pm Thursday night that Indian Minister called and said he couldn't come, which really isn't very nice, but we will wing it and make do the best we can.

At 7am I am leaving for Bemidji to pick up a dozen coffee cakes and rolls for after the memorial which starts at 10. We have decided that I will speak first, and then Whitney will sing the French love song she sang to Charmaine the week before she died. Garrett will then speak and ask if anyone else would like to talk. After that we are kind of at a loss on what to do and we will brain storm in the morning. If all else fails we figure we can play Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues, as that was Charmaine's favorite song.

When Charmaine died all I wanted to do was go upstairs and sleep for a week. I wanted to sit around and think, look at the lake, and figure out what I am going to do. I haven't been able to do any of that, but now I can. After everybody leaves I will take that long sleep, maybe I won't get dressed for a couple of days and other than the green house, I don't have any responsibilities for a while.

I have this months bills paid and I will be going down to Grand Rapids to work in two weeks, also I have lots of work in the workshop that should have been done months ago. Right now I only have about 10 minutes worth of ambition, but that will come.

It is about midnight and I can hear the loons calling on the lake. I am sure that a few minutes of listening to them and I will be sound asleep.