Sad Activities

We attended a meaningful and comforting funeral service for Ken Boyer yesterday. We kept looking for Garry and Ginger and not seeing them, but I felt certain they were just where we could not see them. As we left to go to Casper Cemetery, however, Ken and Keith told us that Ginger was in the hospital at Cape Girardeau. Keith had felt something was wrong the night before when they were not at the visitation and had started phoning. Ginger had felt strange (not as observably ill as several times in the past when she had life-threatening episodes and was taken by ambulance to the hospital) but Garry thought she needed to be checked out. The ER admitted to the hospital for tests.

At the lovely funeral dinner given by the First Baptist Church of Anna in their fellowship hall, we were able to visit with the Wenger cousins and with friends Harlan and Carmen, and Gerald met and talked to a Shawnee classmate of Keith about the "olden times" in the Mississippi bottoms.

I was looking for my cousin Helen wondering if she would be helping with serving the meal, and one of the helpers said she wasn't but she was in the other room with the leisure club (is that the correct name?) that meets on Tuesday. Glancing out the window, he saw her car and said, "Yes, she is still there. Let me go get her." So soon I was also visiting with my cousin. That was good.

After the meal and the sad goodbyes to Jo, Scott, Stacy, Irma, and others, we decided to go on to Trinity Cemetery as Gerald had hoped to do. He had been wanting to see his grandfather's gravesite there. We neatened up a bit around the tombstone of Ben and Ida Glasco and their 3-year-old daughter Lela who died when Gerald's daddy was four and their son Oard, who was murdered when he was 20. Gerald's daddy never got over grieving for his brother. Daddy had been told once that a person who was involved would approach Daddy before his death, but no one ever did. (The person who was tried for the murder was not convicted.) Not too long ago, someone found an ancient newspaper clipping about the murder in a box from an estate sale and gave it to Garry, who had copies made and shared the clipping with all of us. It was a sad commentary that teenage gangs are not a new phenomenon, and young men traveled in packs back in the 1920s also and were jealous when a handsome newcomer came to the community.

At this point, we started trying to find out about Ginger thinking she was probably already home from an overnight stay at the hospital. When no one answered the phone at their home, we decided to go to Cape as she must still be in the hospital. So we did and visited with her and Garry until evening. We were there when the nurse came in and explained the doctor wanted to do an angiogram this morning to rule out any blockages. We are awaiting news.