TUSooner
4/29/2008, 12:42 PM
Or call it a visitation if you want, but it was Catholic, so I'll call it a wake.
Jim, the guy who died, was my wife’s boss years ago when they worked at a jewelry store. He was great guy, a retired army sergeant, who got to drive Elvis somewhere when they were both stationed in Germany after WW2.
Even though Jim and his wife, Imelda, were about 15 years older than us, we became good friends. We used to go out to dinner together at least once a month. We got to know a bunch of their family and they go to know ours. Then the jewlery store closed and I started law school and we had kids and they had grandkids and we stopped seeing each. We’d exchange Christmas cards and say we ought to get together again, but we didn’t. It’s too late now, of course.
So think a minute, and if there is somebody you haven’t seen in a long time and you think you ought to see them, do it real soon.
An interesting thing I noticed or had forgotten was that Jim was from Boston, but he married into a Cajun-Indian family. I think they belong to the Houma tribe. “Houma,” by the way, means “red” and is the is the same as the “homa” in Oklahoma. Anyway, Jim’s 93-year old mother-in-law was there, and Imelda had to drop into French to explain to dear old Maw-Maw who we were. Imelda was also speaking French with some of her old school mates. You just don’t hear that language much in New Orleans these days, and probably not much even out in Acadiana. I just thought it was kind of neat.
As it turns out the old Houma Cajun Maw-Maw was living in St Bernard Parish downriver from New Orleans when Katrina hit. She refused to evacuate, and basically swam to high ground when the water came up. She would have been 90 at that time. She finally got hauled off to the Reliance Dome or some such place in Houston, where she lived for three days before anybody knew she had made it out and was alive. She looked like pretty fit gal, to me. I thought that was kinda neat, too. Made me miss my sweet and tough old German Grandma.
Well, that’s all from New Orleans, the city that put the “fun” in funeral.
Jim, the guy who died, was my wife’s boss years ago when they worked at a jewelry store. He was great guy, a retired army sergeant, who got to drive Elvis somewhere when they were both stationed in Germany after WW2.
Even though Jim and his wife, Imelda, were about 15 years older than us, we became good friends. We used to go out to dinner together at least once a month. We got to know a bunch of their family and they go to know ours. Then the jewlery store closed and I started law school and we had kids and they had grandkids and we stopped seeing each. We’d exchange Christmas cards and say we ought to get together again, but we didn’t. It’s too late now, of course.
So think a minute, and if there is somebody you haven’t seen in a long time and you think you ought to see them, do it real soon.
An interesting thing I noticed or had forgotten was that Jim was from Boston, but he married into a Cajun-Indian family. I think they belong to the Houma tribe. “Houma,” by the way, means “red” and is the is the same as the “homa” in Oklahoma. Anyway, Jim’s 93-year old mother-in-law was there, and Imelda had to drop into French to explain to dear old Maw-Maw who we were. Imelda was also speaking French with some of her old school mates. You just don’t hear that language much in New Orleans these days, and probably not much even out in Acadiana. I just thought it was kind of neat.
As it turns out the old Houma Cajun Maw-Maw was living in St Bernard Parish downriver from New Orleans when Katrina hit. She refused to evacuate, and basically swam to high ground when the water came up. She would have been 90 at that time. She finally got hauled off to the Reliance Dome or some such place in Houston, where she lived for three days before anybody knew she had made it out and was alive. She looked like pretty fit gal, to me. I thought that was kinda neat, too. Made me miss my sweet and tough old German Grandma.
Well, that’s all from New Orleans, the city that put the “fun” in funeral.