Mom memorialized

Children honor generations at postponed service

BAZETTA -- Susan Lewis and her brothers, Pat and Phil Moore, had a lot of time to consider how they wanted to memorialize their mother, Charlotte Moore, at the time of her passing last December at age 82.

She had a disease that caused brain bleeds starting six years ago. She spent more than five years in the Gillette Nursing Home in Warren before her death. "It was a very long, heart-wrenching process," Lewis said.

Charlotte and her husband, Phillips, of Kinsman, were loved greatly. Phillips and at least one of their children visited Charlotte every day. Phillips died in June 2019, but the children continued the daily visits.

"We would go to Gillette every evening at dinner and feed her and take care of her for the night," Lewis said. "We tried to make things as normal as possible, as much for Dad as for Mom."

When Charlotte died, the nation was in the grips of a brutal phase of COVID-19 with case and death counts at extraordinary high levels. Holding the type of services the family wanted was impossible.

"With Mom dying at the height of COVID, we didn't feel comfortable" holding a large service, Lewis said. "It was horribly cold and stormy those couple of weeks, so we just did a private graveside service with just my brothers and our spouses, strictly private. Whereas at Dad's graveside service, we had quite a few people there -- friends and family," she said.

"We knew when Mom passed, we would do a celebration of some sort, not knowing when that time would be. We knew we would do a celebration for the both of them," she said.

MEMORIAL SERVICE

So, Lewis, who calls herself a "planner," set to work on a memorial service to be held at the Country Porch Winery in Bazetta on Aug. 15.

"So, I had already kind of planned what I wanted to do for her. Their anniversary was Aug. 11, 1956, so we knew that when we did the celebration, we wanted it to be around their anniversary. We wanted it to be a nice, summer day," she said.

It was.

"I would have liked to have had a regular graveside service for her, like we were able to do with Dad," Lewis said. "We're not into the calling hours, open casket type of thing. That's not our family."

They had 50 to 60 people at her father's service at All Souls Cemetery in Bazetta prior to COVID-19. "It was more of a casual thing where we were all just around him," she said. "Everybody could be there, and it was a beautiful sunny day. My dad was a very simple person. He didn't want a lot of fanfare."

Lewis said COVID-19 prevented her family from having a public service within several days of her mother's death, but it enabled her to spend more time preparing photos and other items to display at the celebration of life at the winery. It included a memorial service and a picnic.

"In the normal situation where your loved one passes away, you're doing the funeral within three days, that whole rush of a thing," she said. "I don't think you get to plan. Like when you're doing the photo montage, you grab the photos that are the closest, where I had months.

"That was kind of my COVID project, and my COVID therapy. I had taken all of the boxes of pictures from my parents' farm and I had them all spread out on the floor, and I made albums," she said. "I was able to really come up with some beautiful photos of my dad's childhood and my mom's childhood, great-great grandparents, so it was really a celebration of life not only for Mom and Dad but for the families.

"On my dad's side, I was able to go back six generations of great-grandfathers. It was a heritage celebration as much as a celebration of their life. It was their life from the beginning, not just their physical life.

"We had the baptismal gown my great-grandfather had worn and passed down. And my mom's dance costumes. My mother was a ballet dancer, and I still had two costumes she had made, and I displayed those. A good family friend did a memorial service and I spoke, and we had a picnic after," she said. It lasted six hours.

TRULY LOVED

In Lewis' remarks during the memorial service, she said she and her brothers never had to wonder whether their parents loved them.

"Our parents made sure every day we knew they loved each other and that my brothers and I were truly loved. As Mom would say, 'I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.'"

Lewis said those attending told her the celebration was "wonderful," and "there were a couple of people who said, 'I've never been to anything like this before.'"

It took on aspects of a family reunion.

"I think it was more like a family gathering because it wasn't in a funeral-home situation," she said. She even met some cousins she didn't know. "That was nice to meet some people from my generation that I had never met before," she said. They decided they get together again later when there was more time.

"It was like, 'Thank you for coming. Hi, how are you?' That sort of thing," she said of the celebration, which about 100 people attended.

In addition to putting together photos to display, Lewis also saved the corner cupboard her great-grandfather built from items auctioned at her parents' house and made a "mini museum" in it to display at the celebration.

Her mother's wedding bouquet, her parents' wedding photo, toys that had belonged to her dad and mom were on one shelf. On another are items from her grandparents and great-grandparents, and the third shelf contains items from her husband's family.

LOCKDOWN PHASE

Though COVID-19 changed the way Lewis and her brothers memorialized their parents, Pat Moore said a bigger hardship was not being able see their mother during parts of COVID-19, such as during the lockdown phase in early 2020.

"The worst thing was not seeing Mom except through windows," Pat Moore said.

"The hard part was when COVID hit, we couldn't be there every day," Lewis agreed. Charlotte's room at Gillette was not on an exterior wall, so during the lockdown phase, "we couldn't even come and sit by the window or anything," Lewis said. "For a while, nobody could go close to the facility at all." Instead, Lewis made daily phone calls to her mom and even spoke with family members of other residents.

In one phase, Lewis and her brothers could visit with Charlotte outdoors, but they had to be 10 feet apart and wearing masks. That didn't work well because Charlotte "didn't understand what masks were. She just couldn't comprehend anymore. So that did not work for her. She would get scared and cry."

In another phase, Lewis and her brothers could sit in the foyer of the nursing home with Charlotte on the other side of a window without masks. "It was better in the foyer because at least she could see our faces," Lewis said.