Hartford services

As noted below, we had 12 inches of snow overnight before the Hartford funeral service. I was up at 5:45 am to plow out the driveway, which was tricky because it was still quite dark. It was also slow because I had the bucket on the tractor instead of the snow blade, and swapping them is a two-person job. The blade pushes the snow, with the bucket one must lift and dump and lower, which requires more time and thought.

Much later, when I mentioned this problem to my family, my mother asked, “You didn’t realize that winter was coming?” Without missing a beat, I answered, “I was told there would be global warming.” (In truth, we left the bucket on to bring in felled wood for our wood stove.)

Anyway, dawn was breaking by 7, which is when the three photos posted below were taken. We were on our way by 7:45, but with the poor road conditions we missed our 8:30 target at the Dillon-Baxter funeral home by about 10 minutes.




Vaiva was dressed in her national costume, with the jewels she wore at our wedding.

Many more people had been able to get to the funeral home that morning. So greetings that might have been spread over couple hours the day before were condensed into just half an hour.

After the funeral director Gerry Baxter led us in the Lord’s Prayer, the casket was closed and we left for Holy Trinity. We were greeted there by the pall bearers and a group of attendants in national costume. A Lithuanian priest had been driven to Hartford from Boston [I need to get the names from Sigita to insert here].

The church was almost half full, surprising given the poor weather conditions. It was a very nice service, entirely in Lithuanian, so I didn’t understand anything. If anyone sends me a summary of the homily I will post it.

Afterwards the funeral director took Vaiva for shipping to Lithuania, and the rest of us retired to the hall in Holy Trinity’s basement. As noted below, Sigita had arranged for the Lithuanian women to provide a pot luck luncheon, and we had additional eulogies for Vaiva. I will post the thoughts that I shared momentarily.



My father, mother, brother Bob and sister Jolene had flown in from Minneapolis for the sad occasion. My other sister Karen had tried to be with us but a variety of factors interfered. The kids and I spent the rest of the afternoon with them at their hotel at Bradley airport.

As noted earlier, we flew to Lithuanian the next day, Sunday, after a neighbor helped pull our van out up our icy driveway. Vaiva was shipped to Lithuania on Monday.