Nathanael's Neighborhood: W.W.I.D?

What Would Ida Do?
With a very heavy heart we joined our friends and family to celebrate the life of my Mother (yes, Mummy's taking over the blog), Ida Butler, yesterday in Waits River Vermont. It was held at the New Hope United Methodist Church, an oft photographed church in the rural hillsides of Vermont:

To a packed church, through the sobs and tears running like a river from my eyes, I implored everyone, to not only live with the idea of WWJD but WWID? My Mom, Ida, was a resolute woman, a woman of conviction, hard work, a woman who lived! She worked from the moment she got up until the moment she went to bed, her hands were hardly ever idle. I could work ALL day and never scratch the surface of what she would do. In her room at the nursing home she came to reside at in her last days, was a quilt square she was embroidering, until her fingers failed.

She was raised back in the depression era and worked HARD as soon as she could walk and as soon as she was capable. From then until the day she died she was sought out for help and advice. At her service her 69 year old little sister wondered how she was going to go on without Ida to help her. Mom was a rock, a rock made of marshmallow for she loved just as fervently as she worked. Though we were poor and didn't have much, we got what we needed and never thought twice. Nosey women once brought the authorities to our remote home when we were kids because they thought we should be taken into foster care because we wore dirty ragged clothes and had no shoes. Our clothes were dirty because we were playing in the sand after helping Mom pick weeds. We were dirty because that's what kids do. We didn't wear shoes because they were confining adn we couldn't feel the cool grass nor the sand. Mom let us LIVE! We never did go into foster care. (We also got dirty in hopes Mom would take us to the swimming hole after dinner!!!). We were loved, we were taught and taught the old way and we were instilled with values that are as rock solid as Mom herself. Dad worked the granite quarries 23 years cutting rock by hand with a sledgehammer and a wedge. No wonder he married Mom. He was into rocks!! :)

So I will go on, without my Mom, but living with her in my blood and by the priciples of What Would Ida Do.

I've been physically sick since yesterday, sick to the very core. I only just an hour or so ago got out of bed yet one more time from yet another lie-down, because I decided Mom wouldn't take her grief and go lie down and cry...Mom would get busy! Mom would realize she had work that needed doing and children that needed tending to and she'd do it! So I got up, did some dishes, re-organized some flowers from her funeral and set them on display (though it made my heart so heavy to do so) and I made a spring wreath to decorate the outside of my house and on it is a bright yellow ribbon from her casket spray. A picture of it's on top of this post. Mom, never one to let anything go to waste, would like it like that. A simple ribbon, with a powerful significance, put yet to another use. That's how Ida would do it.