Pilgrim's progress

The week we traveled to Southern Illinois was a marathon for all of us. Caitlin, Walker and I drove to Wichita, collected Mom and then went back to Elizabethtown, via St. Louis, to visit, stay at the Rose Hotel, and scatter Dad's ashes in the Ohio River.

Mom got very tired and forgetful, but remembered all sorts of things once we got there. She would have been more rested, but she has always refused to sleep in the car. She has to be sure we're doing okay. This was not dementia. This was Mom. She held the world together.

Caitlin took these two pictures. We were standing on the bluff taking a last look. It was really important to take that trip.

Dad's ashes had been languishing on the old Zenith console television for a couple of years in a box engraved with ". . . to everything there is a season." Dad was not a big fan of television. He used to heave large, heavy sighs when things were not working out. We swore we could hear him sigh from up on the Zenith every time we watched something dumb on the old t.v.

So we packed him in a suitcase and he became our "mission" once again. We checked in to the Rose Hotel, renovated by the state of Illinois and set up as a bed and breakfast. It was build in 1812 to house travelers along the river, which was settled back in the Revolutionary War days. All along the river bottom, about a day's walk from each other, there were inns where all sorts of folks stayed. Several people were murdered here, when the hotel had a tavern and bodies were dug out of the basement during the renovation.

When we arrived, it was very quiet and we sneaked down to the water's edge and scattered Dad into the luke warm summer water. We spilled a little on the rocks. I don't think Dad would have minded. After all, the worst day on the rocks by the Ohio is better than bad television in a family room in Wichita. We sat and sang Shennandoah, which my Dad used to massacre in a high tenor when vacuuming or taking a shower. He had a high reedy voice that brooked no interference from concepts such as pitch or rhythm.

When my Dad died, Mom was really tired and somewhat demented and she managed to arrange funeral services with not one, but two ministers. We cancelled the second one. We got a call the day before the funeral asking if we had forgotten the "viewing." We had. They got Dad all dressed up and none of us came to see him. I can still hear him sigh. He hated suits.

Somehow this mission to Illinois, in our own minds, made up for some of that chaos.