Ethel Mason’s three surviving family members and their spouses left the church with the casket for a private graveside service while the rest of us trundled downstairs to the fellowship hall for the wake. There, the somberness of the service upstairs was replaced with a mountain of food, conversation and laughter.
Mel, Barb and I each took loaded plates from the buffet line staffed by church members and found seats at one end of a long row of tables. Mel and I, as is typical of the two of us when we can manage it, given our backgrounds, chose positions at one end of the room facing the most used entry and exit door. Barb sat across from us with her back to it.
The conversations swirling all around quieted enough to be noticeable to Barb when Janet and her aunts and uncles returned to the
