Jersey Girl was on a brief, unplanned hiatus this week from blogging. Life just got in the way, keeping me from doing the things that I want to do.
I love Sunday mornings. This time of year, I take my Mets mug of coffee out to the deck to leisurely peruse the Sunday paper. I started reading the paper when I was quite young, first, just the comics. From there, I added the Entertainment section to my daily reading. Eventually, I graduated to the whole paper, including the obituaries. My mother used to tease me about that; I think she also thought it was a bit strange. I really don't know why I read it. Occasionally, I would recognize a name, perhaps a schoolmate's parent.
During college, I worked one summer in a local bank. One of my jobs was to read the obits in all the local papers and check to see if they had an account with the bank and flag it. This was to stop anyone from withdrawing money from the account. Morbid, but right up my alley.
Speaking of morbid, when my mother passed away, my ever-frugal father, had his name and date of birth carved on the tombstone. My father outlived my mother over 20 years; it had to be strange for him to see his name on a tombstone with this blank area where the date of the day he would die, was waiting to be filled in.
Having his name put on the tombstone prematurely caused all other complications later on, considering he started having an affair with the married nurse he hired to take care of my mom at home during the day after I left for college. Even after my mom died, my father didn't want this woman to get divorced. And she didn't. Instead, her husband killed himself. Her son found him on the kitchen floor with a bullet in his head. Nice, huh? So my father did the honorable thing (she says, tongue firmly planted in cheek) and eventually married her. My father is now buried with my mother and the second wife is buried with her first husband. Isn't that special?? As you might be able to figure out, no one ever mistook my family for the Anderson family on
"Father Knows Best."Anyway, obituaries have changed over time. They're much more interesting. Just today, I learned:
MB, age 77, loved crafts and was quite talented,
CC, age 57, was a "big, fun-loving truck driver,"
BD, age 70, was known as "The Queen of the Apple Pie,"
MD, age 93, "loved to drive and would pick up and visit anyone for any reason anywhere in the country, often by herself." (And no, she did not die in a car accident),
MW, age 94, left instructions in her journal, that her funeral was to be "simple, simple, simple" and there was to be no sadness.
BW, age 16 (these are the tough ones, I always wonder how someone so young died. Sometimes you can tell whe the family requests donations to some charity.) She loved the Jonas Brothers and her 2 cats, Niki and Oreo.
LC, no age given, made a mean cheesecake,
MD, age 71, was an avid Mets fan and went to Spring Training every year. (Uh-oh, the Mets can't afford to lose another fan, with the record they have. I'd figure I'd get that joke in before
Otin did).
Makes me think what would be in my obit. Let's see, avid Mets fan, dog lover, Jersey Girl, took her 3 tries to get marriage right (or you could just say "slow learner"), survived her childhood (and cancer twice), hopefully good friend and sister, quick with a joke (sometimes too quick, which translated means "my foot spent more time in my mouth than the average person." I don't know, it doesn't sound like much. Maybe I haven't peaked yet! What about you? What would be the highlights in your obit?
