Cross post of a letter from my wife

[This is a cross post from my wife's blog]

The following was written by my wife today.

Dear Family and Friends,

I made some hard decisions this week. I’m the only daughter of my mother, who passed away on Friday night.

I flew for more than 5 hours to say good-bye to my mother but, she died a few minutes after I landed at the airport.

Our good-bye was different than what I had hoped.

On two or three hours of sleep, I had to decide what would be best for her funeral. My entire life, my mother talked constantly about where she wanted to be buried. You see, my mother is my father’s second wife. There is no room for her at the family plot.

Because I feel that the most important thing for my mother is to be with my father, the only option is to have her cremated. This gives us the ability to bury her above my father’s casket.

Cremation also allows for me to have time to get my family and anyone else that wants to together to say goodbye. This may be a selfish act on my part, giving me time to heal before celebrating her life, but I need to lick my wounds on my own and the fresh pain of losing my mother, something that in this instance I have to do on my own, is too much to bare when I have to converse with others.

I do apologize to those that need closure differently than I do. I promise that we will celebrate everything that she was, together. And allow her to be where she wanted to be, with her husband.

I know some of you have memories of my mom, and perhaps pictures and things as well. If you would share them with me, I'd love to compile them into something that I can share with everyone, to celebrate her, but also to heal the hole that is now in our lives.

Thank you.

I fully support my wife in her decisions. I also want to express thanks to everyone who has expressed love and support to us at this time. The smallest of gestures seem to mean the most.