Indiana Trip Impressions

I saw many, many beautiful places while traveling 900 miles of roads twice in three days. While most of those miles were on interstate roads, I think I would have seen even more beauty on smaller roads leading through residential areas, agricultural areas and small towns. As it was, lush woodlands, tall corn (King Corn is an appropriate nomer as a description of American crop choices.), grasslands, and flowering roadside plants made me wish often that I wasn't whizzing by at 65 or more miles per hour.

Very few places showed signs of drought, and some areas obviously had a surplus of rain. I had never before seen cornstalks laid over in low-lying areas where rushing water had evidently nearly dislodged them. Lodged wheat? Yes. But lodged corn? No, except for garden sweet corn, temporarily, after a strong wind.

I'm glad I live here, but I hope people who live elsewhere are able to see and appreciate the beauty of their part of the world as well.

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The weather on the day of the funeral was perfect--blue skies, warm sun, cool air, and a very light breeze. That night we drove to Springfield, IL and spent the night. The next day started out just as beautifully, but every stop on the rest of the way home felt warmer, and it was quite warm when we reached home around 5:30 in the evening.

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Paul and Edith do the kind of traveling I like. No grim determination to get to the destination in record time. Time to sit down in a restaurant to eat--fast food usually, however, but Cracker Barrel food in Springfield. Freedom to snack inside the vehicle--not that fastidious. Sleeping in an inexpensive, but very clean motel rather than pushing on through the night. A few good sermons and good music to listen to, and hours and hours of good stimulating conversation--all in air conditioned comfort without mechanical problems or traffic hassles. When we were nearly home and I wanted to pay my share of the trip costs, Paul told me that the costs were already covered through the church treasury.

Usually, when there is a death elsewhere that involves a family member of someone in our church, a minister attends the funeral at church expense. This time it was our bishop's father-in-law, so he was obviously attending, but others wished to attend also. However, no one could quite make it work, so Paul was designated the proxy (after he decided to go at his own expense, however), and I benefited as well.

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I felt like I learned to know Susanna's father better at his memorial service than I had during his life. It made me sorry I had missed out on learning to know him really well.

Alvin was apparently a meticulous man with a penchant for details. This part of who he was reminded me a great deal of what I've heard about my Grandpa Beachy. He was Alvin's second cousin, and I began to see that some of the same DNA must have influenced both of them. Alvin would describe the workings of things in great detail; my grandfather would record things in great detail. They both loved to travel. However, my grandfather never passed out candy like Alvin did. My grandpa's wife would have probably headed this off by admonishing him about the health risks involved with eating so much sugar. She was way ahead of her time in nutritional matters.

Alvin's frail wife, Barbara, will clearly be affected in the most major way by his passing. They had been married more than 60 years, and it was Alvin who visited her most faithfully at the nursing home--every day, apparently. No one else in the family has the kind of freedom from other responsibilities that would make this daily kind of commitment easy to follow through on. Nevertheless, Alvin and Barbara's children plan to discuss together and decide what is in their mother's best interests and see to it that her needs are met.

Apart from the obvious grief at parting, Alvin's passing felt to me like a necessary end to a long and blessed life. Until an accident two weeks before the funeral, he had apparently been relatively free of major limitations, on his mobility at least. But the ten days or so in the hospital after the accident were grueling for Alvin's family, and when it became obvious that he could not recover, his passing could be seen as a deliverance.

At the burial, Barbara, in spite of some dementia and the stressfulness of the time since Alvin's accident, remembering better times, said something to this effect: "We forgot one thing. We should have [or perhaps Daudy would have] brought candy to pass out to the children."

I'm confident that, in heaven, Alvin is enjoying pleasures surpassing the things he enjoyed here. I sometimes wonder whether those pleasure will be akin the ones we enjoyed here on earth. Maybe candy without sugar hazards will possible in heaven. Certainly there will be many children there [or do children grow up in heaven?], and there will be no life-destroying fatty embolisms in anyone's future.

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David spoke at the funeral, sharing scripture, memories, and the obituary. He said that he discovered on his and Susanna first date that her father drove a Mercedes. David at that time was driving a car he describes now as a "nothing," (He said exactly what it was, but all that escapes me now.) and implied that he suspected that he was not in the same league at all as Susanna's family. However, he understood later that Alvin drove a Mercedes for quite practical reasons--he thought it would last a long time. That was undoubtedly something David could identify with. David also regrets that he never got that written diagram of a mint still that Alvin described and was going to illustrate.

David also talked about the reality of Satan having no more power to harm a person at the moment he passes into the presence of God through death.

The Mt. Joy pastor who spoke at the funeral commented that Alvin would have enjoyed mingling with the crowd that gathered at his funeral. "He wouldn't have missed it for the world, but he missed it for heaven," he said.

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Having attended the funeral was a real privilege, and, while the timing is always inconvenient for many, and was especially so for David's family, it was right for me, coming just after Joel and Hilda's move and just before Shane and Dorcas' move, between two market weekends, after the apricots were mostly dealt with, before the Miller reunion coming up this weekend, during the summer instead of the school year . . . I thank God.

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The flowers needed water when I got home, and Hiromi had been battling really fast-growing weeds. He had also harvested quite a few tomatoes, which is carefully cutting into numbered sample dishes, and recording comments on each one after he tastes them. He asked me to do the same after church last night. I did so, and saw that almost every time he wrote "acid" I wrote "sweet." I'm not sure what that says. Maybe the balance is perfect. I won't go into what it might say about our diverse views of live.

Hiromi also informed me that the whole business of changing sensors on our minivan cost about $1300.00. (They were causing the engine to shut down at inopportune times.) He also had to visit the chiropractor three times in the past week. Hiromi is putting many things together and coming up with an even bigger negative. "This may be the last year I can garden. We may need to stop going to market. If we don't go to market, we don't need a minivan. Everything is packed in there so tightly that the engine has to be moved to be able to fix it. We need a vehicle that's cheaper to maintain." Sigh. I have learned that on another day, under other conditions, it all may look better again, so I'm not making plans yet to stop gardening, stop going to market, or buy a different vehicle. Grant points out that it's not just minivans that have tightly packed mechanical parts, so that one negative part of our current situation is already looking less negative in comparison to other options.

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We stayed at Glenn and Amy's house in Indiana. They have very comfortable accommodations, and are comfortable people to be with, and gracious hosts. Their son, Tim, who was in my Writer's Workshop by Mail years ago came over with his family to visit while we were there.

Glenn worked on a committee with my dad a year or two ago to help resolve matters in a problematic church situation. He commented that Dad was obviously not impaired in any way in his ability to function in that situation. He was the the one who put words to the group's findings, and clearly understood what was important to focus on.

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Paul has the same kind of curiosity regarding church matters that I grew up seeing in my dad. I enjoyed again getting in on some of these kind of conversations--between Paul and Glenn mostly. I admit to some of this kind of curiosity myself.

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While traveling, we made made "good progress" on solving the world's problems in our schools, churches, families, missions, personal lives (especially related to spiritual and natural gifts and disabilities). Having enough time for this kind of extended conversation is hard to come by, and so satisfying. When you share basic values but have diverse experiences it's so much fun to explore how these experiences have provided perspective and insights.

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We visited Paul's sister-in-law, Marilyn in Indiana before we left there. Her husband, Vernon, died several years ago. By all accounts, he was a sociable individual who often arranged gatherings for the cousins who lived in the area, and he was often the center of lively discussions at family reunions. Glenn said he told someone once that he likes to take a strong position in these discussions because it usually provokes an equally strong response. That way he gets to hear the "best" of the counter-arguments, and he can use that information to see if he needs to change his mind. I think I would have liked to listen to Vernon.

Marilyn said that Vernon had lived with a group of other young men before they were married. This group got together at Vernon and Marilyn's house later, and had what Marilyn found to be a rather disturbingly heated argument among themselves. Then when it was all over, one of them pushed his chair back and said, "My, that was fun again," and everyone agreed. Marilyn was astounded. But she did say that one time at a family reunion she walked off when Vernon and his niece got into a political debate that exceeded the limits of Marilyn's idea on what were appropriate boundaries. Amazingly enough, I had heard about that conversation from someone else who witnessed it, and my informant had found it unsettling too.

Marilyn and Vernon were both long-term teachers. Marilyn has a very sweet and optimistic spirit, and lively mind at 80, and I enjoyed learning to know her.

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And now, it's time to leave Indiana reminisces and get to my waiting household jobs in Kansas.