Thanks for the Memories

"I swear you go to more memorial services than I do," my mother said to me this morning, when I told her our plans for the day.

That may definitely be true over the past 12 months, when we have gone to several memorial services for people we have known for a long time.

"I suppose this is going to be happening to us more and more," a woman said to me after the memorial service this afternoon. "I hate that," she added.

Today's memorial was for Marilyn Mantay, about whom I wrote a few days ago.

There was a nice group of people who gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Church (chosen because Marilyn had no real church affiliation and this seemed the least "churchy" church around).

There was wonderful music by students of the UC Davis Department of Music (a string quartet and four singers), under the direction of D. Kern Holloman; there were two piano compositions from Richard Livingston, a former Davis High School teacher, whose tunes reminded me of what my father used to compose. A flautist, whose name did not make it to the program, also played a lovely flute piece that she had once performed for an audience of one: Marilyn.

During the comments by friends, I found out that after Marilyn left The Davis Enterprise, she continued to review for another newspaper, where she could do reviews of classical music, her first love. Two years ago, she began publishing some of them in a blog, which a friend of hers told me was going to be taken down because the family didn't want to pay the fees to keep it going.

I took it upon myself, when we came home, to find her original blog and move the whole thing to a site on Blogger, where it can stay indefinitely, for those who would like to read her writings.

We had a nice time after the memorial, standing around eating lovely food and chatting with old friends, and with people we had not met before.

It was a dark and stormy afternoon and inside the meeting hall it was getting darker. One thought suddenly popped into my head: BISSELL!!

I had dropped the puppy off at Petco at noon and said I would pick him up on the way home from the memorial. The placement at Petco goes from noon to 4 p.m. and it was already a little after 4.

I grabbed Walt and we both raced out to the car and over to Petco, where, thank goodness, we were not the last foster parents to arrive.

Bissell was still there, and I confess to being relieved. I was hoping he'd come "home" again. There was apparently a family there who were evaluating him, but the SPCA rep told us to take him. I don't know what, if anything, will come of the evaluation.

But lemme tell you, you never saw a puppy so glad to be "home." He must not have peed all day because he immediately went outside for a long time, unusual for him. Then he and Lizzie started playing, racing back and forth from the living room to the back yard and back again, leaping high into the air and landing plop! on my stomach with their muddy paws, then instantly back down onto the floor and continuing the race all over again.

Walt and I sat here and watched Tim Russert for an hour and the dogs played nonstop for the entire hour. I suspect they will both sleep well tonight.