A Wedding, Then a Funeral

The day after we arrived home from California, we received word that my Aunt Helen had passed away in northern Michigan. My cousins planned a memorial service for yesterday afternoon, so no sooner had we begun unpacking from one trip when we found ourselves repacking for another. Jacob, Irma, Nancy, and I trekked north on Saturday. We met up with some relatives, and then stopped by our farm to inspect the trees that we had planted in the spring. Jacob was able to get in some driving time on the back forty before we retired to our hotel for the night. On Sunday, we headed to Traverse City for the funeral. The weather was strange the entire weekend – we experienced sunshine one minute, followed by wind, rain, and sleet the next. The memorial service ended up being very nice, the dinner afterwards was ample & delicious, and our drive back home proved to be uneventful.

My Aunt Helen, 95-years-old at her death, had been my very last living aunt. My mom is the youngest of eleven children and my dad had nine older siblings. Out of all of these aunts and uncles, and all of their spouses, only my 84-year-old mother is still alive. Aunt Helen was, incidentally, one of four aunts that I had with the name of Helen. My parents both had a sister Helen, and two of my dad’s brothers married Helens. That name must have been all the rage back in the early 1900s.