Graham's Obituary

The past few days have been a blur. I had to fly to St. Louis Tuesday morning so that I could pick out Graham's burial plot Wednesday morning. I was up all night Monday unpacking all the stuff we had had in the Manor Care room, and then doing laundry and packing for the St. Louis trip. I was so very very tired, but I didn't have time to sleep.

Around 4am, as I was trying to find some winter shoes to pack, I had to lie down on the closet floor to look underneath the clothes for the "hardly ever wear, should throw away but can't" shoes tucked way in back. Well, it felt soooo good to lie down, like one of the greatest pleasures ever...and suddenly... zzzzzzzzzzzzz. I was asleep. Tick, tock, tick, tock...cab coming, need to be packed...zzzzzzzzzzz...

Ring, ring! The telephone woke me up. Thankfully my neighbor Ella saw that my lights were on and had just gotten the email message from me about Graham's death, so she called to ask if she could come over and give me a hug. If I had stayed asleep, I would have surely missed my plane. Thank you, Ella, for waking me up!! And the hug was much needed too.

Flew to St. Louis via Los Angeles. You could tell which people were going back home to LA, and which were just passing on to somewhere else. The LA people were all so well groomed. So blond. So buff. So botoxed. The rest of us looked, uh, comfortable.

Then I connected with a flight to St. Louis. The first two hours of the three hour flight were fine, but the third hour....time seemed to stand still.

When I got off the plane, I had a call waiting for me from the funeral director, telling me that he needed to send in Graham's obituary first thing in the morning. You'd think I would have had Graham's obituary written a long time ago. Well, you'd be wrong. Strangely, Graham's death surprised me. I always felt like I had more time to write the obituary. Plus, I didn't feel up to the task. It's a big responsibility trying to capture someone's essence in a short obit. I wanted to get input from Graham's brother and cousins, but there never seemed to be a right time.

As soon as I arrived at the Chesterfield hotel, I went straight to my brother's room (he had arrived that afternoon), and started writing. I figured if I went to my room, I'd just fall asleep.
Below is what eventually was written. Forgive me if I didn't do Graham justice.

Here's the link to Graham's obituary. It's on an interesting website called legacy.com
It allows you to sign a guest book, add comments, upload photos. So, please feel free to participate in that way!

Here's the link to the obituary:
http://www.legacy.com/Link.asp?I=LS000121818956X