“This is the fanciest I’ve ever seen her done up! She was a very practical woman!” The speaker was assisting at the funeral today of someone he loved very much, judging from his fond reminiscences. “If someone gave her something, she was as likely as not to return it to the store, take the money and spend it at garage sales!”
Well, I could vouch for her fondness for garage and estate sales. We like them too, and nearly always ran into our friend rummaging through merchandise on a pleasant Saturday. “I spent 32 cents!” she would announce proudly of her frugality and bargain hunting. I’ve no doubt she went to the sales for the camaraderie, fresh air and sunshine, and the entertainment of peeking into someone’s life through their possessions.
Today was her funeral, and the church was packed. We got there right on time, but it was too late to get a seat in the sanctuary. We sat in the overflow room and listened to the service over the sound system. “Have you ever seen any of her quilts?,” a lady said to me in the privacy of the overflow room after quilting was mentioned in the eulogy as one of her passions. “They are gorgeous!” she exclaimed. I had heard that they even had some of the quilts on display in the viewing room of the funeral chapel. I remember her saying she had made quilts for all her children and many for her friends and grandchildren as well.
Her love for church and living for God was the main remembered attribute of the departed today. “Church is where she learned the way to Heaven,” the speaker noted. “You don’t learn that at the Elks Club, or Kiwanas or the American Legion,” he went on. “Church was her life.” Judging from all the friends and family in attendance, hers was a life well lived, and her influence was felt by many.
A dignified-looking elderly woman sat across from us on a makeshift seat in the overflow room. Toward the end of the service she said, “She was my best friend, my next door neighbor. I’m going to miss her so much; we talked every day.” She went on to say they were both widows, and were very close. My husband told me later the woman speaking was of a well-to-do business family here.
Like the quilts she created, her life was a patchwork of interlocking relationships built over the years and long lifetime in her community. Joined together, the pieces were a montage of colors, patterns, joys and sorrows, lovingly and painstakingly stitched into a covering of faith, offering warmth and comfort in a thing of beauty, like the life of the one we honored and remembered today.
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