JANUARY 7, 2003: I attended Aunt Phiddy's memorial at East Naple's United Methodist Church on Tuesday. She passed away on December 20th, 2002. The plans were for her to be cremated with her ashes being scattered at sea. And of course with Christmas and New Year's and all the family events that usually accompany these holidays, Uncle Jeff decided to have her memorial on the 7th. This is also the sixth anniversay of my own mother's passing. Aunt Phiddy's birthday was December 27th and Uncle Jeff's is January 3rd. It was hard to say good-by, but she will be remembered always. What fun she was -- so full of life. I am blessed to have had her for my Aunt. And I know she and my mom are happily exploring all the wonders of heaven. We were able to stop by their home in Lely for some food and refreshments afterwards. It was good to see old friends and family. Old family photos had been brought out of storage, many of which I had never seen before. The older I get, the closer I seem to be to those past relations.
Uncle Jeff had recorded an oral account of his WWII adventures this past July and Aunt Phiddy had it put on a CD which they then duplicated for their Christmas gifts. She and Uncle Jeff made a wonderful remembrance. I converted the cda file which was 407,000 kb to an mp3 file which is still a whopping 45000 kb. I don't think you'll be able to listen to it online, so if you have the connection speed and time I would suggest "Right clicking" on the link and "Save Target As" to your own computer first. It's about 46 minutes in length and well worth a listen.
My sisters and I had flowen down on the Sunday before the memorial to be with Dad and Kathy in Sun City Center. We had a great time enjoying a few brief days of warmth and sunshine before winging our way back to Indy on Wednesday.