Icky

[wolf]

I am at home. Yesterday was spent making the arrangements with the funeral director, which is another entire story to tell.

Crazynurse's homecoming was followed by a weekend of joy, love, and laughter. Visitors came to share memories, and occasionally tell a bad joke.

Each night crazynurse chose a movie to watch. Saturday was Dances with Wolves, and Sunday was Spaceballs. We were going to work our way through some other Mel Brooks movies next.

While we were watching the movie, crazynurse's 15 month old grandson was playing alone in the kitchen. He was running around and giggling, showing one of his first birthday cards to someone, and running around like he was being chased, and holding his arms up the way he does when he wants to be picked up by someone. The older daughter and I were watching him, looked at each other and wondered if he were playing with Pop-Pop Bob, who had promised to come for crazynurse when it was time.

As her daughter and I were settling her in for the night on Sunday, crazynurse asked me if I were staying. I had prepared to do so, and had a bag at the house already. I told my intention for that night was to go home, but that if she wanted me to stay, I would stay. She asked me to stay, and so I grabbed my bag, brushed my teeth, pulled off my sweatshirt, kicked off my sneakers and laid down on the couch.

Notice, please, that I didn't say that I got my adorably cute jammies out of my bag, put them on, and laid down. I was fully dressed.

We were all exhausted. I was asleep within a couple of minutes.

I had a very vivid dream about going to talk to crazynurse's spirit guide, and to offer her food for the journey. Her daughters both told me (the one in the room next to her, as well as the one with the baby monitor, that they heard crazynurse and I talking to each other … but “not in English, in some other language I never heard.”)

I woke up suddenly after that, I think in response to a change in crazynurse's breathing. I woke up her daughter who got the younger daughter downstairs.

Within a few minutes of that, with all of us there talking to her, holding her hand, crazynurse passed, at 12:12 am on Monday, November 21, 2011 … not the exact 20th anniversary of her husband's death, but, like him, three days before Thanksgiving.

Mary Jane (Hoffman) Smith

Born:*July 04, 1946

Died:*November 21, 2011

Services: *Relatives and friends are invited to attend her Funeral Mass at 10AM on Friday, November 25, at Corpus Christi Catholic Church, 900 Sumneytown Pike, Lansdale, with burial following at George Washington Memorial Park.
Visitation: *Family will receive friends on Wednesday from 6-8PM at R. L. Williams, Jr. Funeral Home, Inc., 3440 Skippack Pike @ Cedars Rd., Skippack.
Mary Jane (Hoffman) Smith, 65, passed away at her Towamencin Twp home on November 21, 2011. She was preceded in death by her husband, Robert G. Smith, in 1991.

Born July 4, 1946 in Philadelphia, she was a daughter of Mary Jane (Clary) Hoffman of Southampton, NJ, and the late Roy Hoffman. She was a 1964 graduate of Academy of Notre Dame in Philadelphia, and a 1967 graduate of St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing in Philadelphia.*

Mrs. Smith was a registered nurse. She worked at the former Philadelphia General Hospital and then Montgomery County Emergency Service of Norristown. She was a founding member of the Montgomery County Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) team and served as the clinical coordinator, was a paramedic and E.M.T. volunteer at Volunteer Medical Service Corps of Lansdale, and a Montgomery County E.M.S. and E.M.T. instructor.

In addition to her mother, she is survived by two daughters, Barbara Jane Fallon and her husband Matthew of O’Fallon, MO, and Mary Elizabeth Harris and her husband Dennis J. of Lansdale; a sister, Catherine M. Cheeseman of Sicklerville, NJ; and three grandchildren, Bailey Renee Smith, Shaela Robin Fallon, and Draven Robert-Jeffrey Harris.*

In addition to her husband and father, she was preceded in death by a brother, Roy A. Hoffman.

Relatives and friends are invited to attend her Funeral Mass at 10AM on Friday, November 25, at Corpus Christi Catholic Church, 900 Sumneytown Pike, Lansdale, with burial following at George Washington Memorial Park. Family will receive friends on Wednesday from 6-8PM at R. L. Williams, Jr. Funeral Home, Inc., 3440 Skippack Pike @ Cedars Rd., Skippack. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in her memory to CISM, EOC c/o EMS, 50 Eagleville Rd., Eagleville, PA 19403. Online condolences may be made to the family at www.RLWilliamsFuneralHome.com.*

Memorials:*In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in her memory to CISM, EOC c/o EMS, 50 Eagleville Rd., Eagleville, PA 19403.

We'll all miss you Janie.