The long journey ends
I spent the last two days on a less-than-pleasant road trip, for my aunt's funeral. The trip took me from the palatial Texas estate through Arkansas to southeast Missouri, where my mother lives. Then on Wednesday, we drove 150 miles west to south-central Missouri for the funeral. I went home from there, and got to see the other side of Arkansas and a familiar part of Oklahoma before mercifully laying down to rest in my own bed. Two days, 1,000 miles, and Aunt Dolly is laid to rest.

The service was in a little church in Theodosia, Mo., population 192, halfway between Springfield and nowhere. It was a nice service, and brief. I helped Aunt Dolly's sons-in-law carry the casket to the grave site. In the tradition of tiny churches in tiny towns, the cemetery is right next to the church. My grandparents, my mother's mother and stepfather, lived in this area. It's about as boondocks as you can get. Many of my deepest-seated memories are in the hills of extreme southern Ozark County, Mo. It was the first time I had been there since the summer of 1989, before I was married, before my grandparents died. Some of it looked very different. Some of it will never change.

Aunt Dolly's daughters were there. One lives in Germany, the other in Japan. I've seen neither for more than a decade. They both seem to be doing reasonably well, all things considered.

On some positive notes, I did get to spend some time with my mother, which doesn't happen very often. She lives on the other side of the state from the rest of my relatives, and it's not an easy trip from side to side. Only two east-west interstate highways cross Missouri, and neither goes there. I was seeing her new place for the first time. It's a very pleasant corner of the world. I'll be there again soon, I hope, with the rest of my group, under better circumstances.

A final note: As I was driving home across Arkansas, the sun set. A bright, bright moon rose in the sky, so bright I could have used it to read, bright enough to reduce the strain on my eyes as I navigated the two-lane road through the Ozarks. Do I believe in such things? Was that my aunt guiding me home?

Sure. For one night, I'll believe.