HELEN'S FUNERAL

Helen was finally laid to rest Wednesday (July 11), a week to the day after she died in her Crestline home. With our usual efficient division of labor, Ann and I managed to get all the details sorted out in time. She went up to Helen's house and rescued a pink dress to clothe her body and some momentoes (worn Bible, Billy Graham devotional) to put in her coffin. I met with the Forest Lawn funeral director in their very tasteful office (everything is upper crust there - including the real china the coffee they brought for me was in - plus a real sugar bowl!) to discuss the details: graveside service only, no guestbook, basic package with pink brocade coffin (pink was Helen's favorite color) - the Sundberg family apparently didn't believe in cremation.

Wednesday morning, Ann ran around and took care of final legal documents while I stopped at the supermarket for some pink roses and called Tam O'Shanter, a local Glendale restaurant "institution", where we would invite the small party of guests after the service.

The weather was clement, a respite from the many uncomfortably hot days in the inner parts of LA the past weeks, and our tiny party arrived amazingly on time: Ann, me, Helen's Mountain Nursing nurse Cathy and her mother, Terry, the neighbor who had noticed Helen's lights on late the night she fell in June, Glenn, the group leader from my church home group (we had been praying for Helen off and on the past months), and Pastor Bill and Florence Antablin, old family friends who had known Dad back in his UCLA days and had met Helen (but never knew her well) in those days of yore.

I had prepared a bulletin with pictures of Helen as a baby, UCLA yearbook picture, and this past year. Inside was a short order of service, including a passage from Job, the last book she'd been reading the night before she died, Cathy said. I had also providentially remembered to ask Helen what her favorite hymn was the last time I'd been with her in June, so we sang that in our so-so a capella voices.

Ann and I spoke about our memories of Helen. I pointed to the two grave markers of her father Ernst Sundberg and her mother Selma next to her freshly dug space and tried to give an overview of the active first half of her life (1920-59) and the largely wasted life on disability since then (1959-2007). She had taught in Dhaharan for a year before I was born, leaving Arabia just before my birth to return to LA in order not to break her LA Unified School District leave of absence terms. The biggest mistake of her life, in hindsight. She could hardly have done better or found a more secure career than as a school teacher with the Aramco schools in that era. Instead, she returned to live at home with her ultra-conservative Lutheran parents as a single woman, a divorcée now who could never remarry without becoming an adultress scripturally. She lasted two school years - 1957-59 - and had some "nervous breakdown", as she called it, going on a disability from her teaching career that lasted her entire life.

It has taken a while to get beyond my lifelong sense of pity for her and silent judgementalism on her life. Dad, just days from his own death, refused to call his only sister when I urged him to, saying, "I've said everything I have to say to her." She was the failure, the bitter, complaining one whom the family could only take in small doses (part of a day only and no overnights - was the collective family wisdom on how to avoid rancorous arguments with her). But she managed to mellow in the years since Dad died, her care givers noticed this. She was less argumentative, more vocally appreciative.

First I, then Ann, got involved in her care, visiting when possible and hoping to steer her towards a healthier living situation, even giving her an ultimatum one year that we were going to sell her house and that she had six months to find other arrangements with our help. She stalled all six months, then refused to budge. Ann spent hours getting her last house refurbished for her to move into, and most recently getting the old house ready for sale. (It's now on the market.)

So, oddly perhaps, her latter days were far more full of family involvement than any time in the last 20-30 years. Years before, I had visualized her end: falling and lying undiscovered for days, since her nurse visited only once a week. I would be living far away and Ann had nothing to do with her in those days (Helen had taken a dislike to her since she was 4.) Old, alone, tragic.

The reality was much better. Because of her recent fall, she had had almost daily visits from someone, usually Cathy, the nurse. She hadn't fallen, but caught herself as some quick attack overtook her (stroke, heart attack), and she went quickly, slumped against the wall. She was found soon after the next morning. Ann and I were both living nearby and had been involved in her care for many months.

The Portuguese have many historic churches christened "Bonfim" (i.e. "Our Lord of the Good End"), recognizing in those days of undependable longevity the blessing of a "good death": death with dignity, surrounded by family, not alone, going peacefully, buried in a good Christian burial, not at sea or lost in the jungle. I think Helen was granted that blessing.