Sometimes our “day” concept gets interrupted for good reason. Last Tuesday, Dave Krichbaum passed away. I never met Dave, but his wife, Sue, has been going to our church forever and is a wonderful lady, so we wanted to go to the funeral and funeral dinner, both of which were on Saturday. It was not the occasion I would have sought, but it did let us spend a good chunk of the day with Aunt Mary, who also knows Sue quite well. That was nice.
The funeral was in Hartville, down near where the Krichbaums live and where we go to church. We met Aunt Mary at the funeral home and we in for the funeral. Our pastor, Ken, did a fabulous job of giving a personal and detailed sermon, which was all the more amazing given that no one was sure what Dave’s faith was. He was a reserved man, and never talked much about religion. Ken treated that subject with sensitivity and compassion, and that was a good thing for Ken to do.
As I said, I did not know Dave, but what I picked up at the funeral was that he was a math and physics major at Mount Union College, and then he served in the Air Force for twenty years before retiring as a major. He moved back home to the farm to take care of his mother and the farm, and he lived out his life there. He was a quiet, no-nonsense man who loved his family. He worked hard, even when his back bothered him from all they physical work around the farm. He had a sense of humor. He died of complications due to a blood disease that was diagnosed two-and-a-half years ago. Sue loved him, and that speaks volumes to me. It sounds as if he was a very good man.
The graveside service was very moving. There were six members of the Air Force there as an honor guard, and the ceremony was precise and unhurried. It choked me up a couple of times, especially when one of them played a perfect rendition of “Taps,” which was not an easy feat given the temperatures in the low 40s with intermittent drizzling.
After the graveside service, we all went back to the church in New Baltimore for a funeral dinner. There was food for about 150 people! (There were about fifty or sixty of us at the dinner). We had a good time of fellowship, and Sue seemed to be taking things fairly well, although I’m sure it will be very difficult over the next few weeks and months.
Mer and I said goodbye to Aunt Mary and headed home, where we took a long food-induced nap (after Mer made a very quick grocery run for the week). Once we were up, I made supper, and we streamed the movie Iron Man 3, which we had not seen yet. It was pretty good. The Iron Man series of films does a good job of balancing the action with lots of humor, which makes the basis for a decent superhero movie. There were a few “oh, come on!” moments, but only a few, and I was quite entertained, especially by the Tony Stark moments (as opposed to the Iron Man moments). Stark is funny and at times introspective and resourceful; when he is Iron Man, he tends to be fighting, and that makes Stark more interesting to me. Not a great movie, but it was a good one.
On Sunday, I managed to get Mer to go for a late evening walk with me down on the Towpath near the Beaver Pond. It was a perfect fall day, and we ran into one set of CVCA parents and another CVCA teacher. We walked for about an hour. I do love Ohio falls – they are pretty and tend to be cool and dry.