Time To Think About A Service

Fourteen years ago Bob and I moved to Oregon from Texas, leaving behind family, friends, people we'd worked with, neighbors, and church friends.

In Oregon we knew very few people because we did not reach out to make friends and have a social calendar. By then Bob had health issues so we saw a lot of doctors and went to a lot of medical appointments. Our son, his wife, and our grandson lived three miles from us and we saw them.

At death Bob was 85.

These are the things we considered as we thought about a service for him.

He was one of ten children but all his siblings and their spouses were deceased except for an 89 year old homebound sister in Texas.

Our former neighborhood had changed in fourteen years. It was an older neighborhood with many original home owners. Many of them were gone. They tended to be about Bob's age.

The men Bob had remained friends with from his work had one by one died over the fourteen year period. Only one remained.

A church connection was no longer in place.

Bob hated to travel and would have been horrified to think we boarded a plane and flew to Texas to have a service for him.

Had he died in a hospital here I had thought about asking a hospital chaplain to meet our family in the chapel to read some scripture and say a prayer. Instead, he died at home.

Susan was here for two weeks after her dad died. Instead of a service it seemed we just 'huddled' together as a family remembering Bob and telling stories.

I learned there doesn't always have to be a service