Memorial Service and Wine and Cheese

It was a pleasant, if slightly melancholy day.  Got up to my friend's at 9:30 and she, her husband, and I went to the memorial service for his mother at St. Paul's Lutheran in East Windsor.
It wasn't exactly a "service," I guess.  We stood in the "Cremains (odious word) Garden" with the (Lutheran) minister. Except for one friend, there was only family there: her two sons (one had died), her grandson and his wife, their two children, the granddaughter-in-law's parents, Frick and Frack, and me.
It's funny that I like F. and F.  They're close to my age, although they're at my friend's generational level, and on the face of it, they don't seem my type: homey, staunchly conservative, very active in the Moravian church, and thoroughly conventional.  Yet they appeal to me, they seem so simple and clear,* and the distaff F. makes wonderful cookies.
Minister read a few passages from a prayer book and talked about how Mavis and her husband, Lee, who was interred there twelve years ago, were pillars of the church.  He asked if anyone wanted to say a few words and the elderly friend was the only one who did. She had been Mavis' neighbor at The Ponds, a pricey gated community where they had lived until Lee died and strokes sent Mavis back to the farm in Minnesota--in her mind, that is.
That really wasn't a bad thing.  She lived for ten more years at Care One, but was no longer elderly and infirm.  She was a young wife and mother, raising three little boys, and teaching Sunday School and darn it, where is that Lee--he only went into town for a loaf of bread.
After, we went back to my friend's for a nice lunch and talked and laughed.  The friend brought out two beautiful wool and fur coats that had been her mother-in-law's.  Both from Flemington Furs, they were tried on and exclaimed over.  Ditto with a peculiar fur hat and a Scottish skirt; Mavis was a clothes horse.  My friend's husband was good enough to take my car for a drive. He doesn't like the sound of it and pretty soon, I'll go up there and we'll take it to a guy they use and trust.
I was home by 3:00 and just puttered around with this and that until it was time for the wine and cheese party at 7:00.  That turned out to be a lot of fun.  It had been awhile since I had seen some of my neighbors and it was enjoyable chatting with them.  It was free, too, and you can't beat that.
Home, I finally got to see Ellen on Skype and had a good session with her.
* I should be ashamed to write that--as if "simple and clear" describes peasants of the mind, as opposed to Mimi, so augustly intellectual and impressively obscure.  That's not what I mean, though.  They seem to have such a solid certainly about life, an afterlife, and what constitutes both that maybe I'm envious.  That attitude usually annoys me, but somehow, I find the F.'s version appealing.