Taylored Memorial Creations

            I am an Oscar winner in a supporting role. It is in my nature, and it always has been as evidenced by my life and my career choices. I grew up the third girl after two outgoing, extroverted girls (or so they seemed to me). My two older sisters paved the way for getting into trouble and “bossing” me around. I naturally followed their lead and learned to support them in whatever endeavors or shenanigans.  Incredibly impressionable, I learned many things from watching their example. Forever a peacemaker, I leaned toward following them, assisting them, and just enjoying spending time with them.  When I was about 12, I decided to hold a Muscular Dystrophy Carnival to raise money for the Jerry Lewis Telethon. I don’t really know why, other than as kids we watched the Jerry Lewis Telethon every year. Inspired to do something for “Jerry’s Kids”, my behind-the-scenes, organizational planning, introverted self, took over and I plann...

  My new daily routine was to put pee pads down before I left for work and clean up the mess when I came home at night.             This was my new normal until I moved, within the next month. Moving was one of many decisions I was forced to make since my husband passed away five months prior.             I worked a full-time job with a 40-minute commute one way. My jack russell terrier, Rocky, now spends the entire day alone in our apartment. He was a mighty little canine, but his bladder was not. This particular day the landlord wanted to show the apartment during the day. I wanted to allow it because he had been nice enough to allow me to break my one-year lease. We were two months into the new lease when it happened…cardiac arrest.             But I wasn’t sure what to do with Rocky, and any potential “messe...

        When Brenda first asked me if I would make her a bear from her mom’s hand-crocheted potholders, my first thought was, “of course! I’ll do my best!”             Why? Because this is exactly what I want to be doing. To help people journey through grief and remember their loved one by turning some of their possessions into memorable items.             My second thought, “I have never done something like this, and with something so precious! A handmade item. Something you can’t get back again if you mess it up.”             Years ago, I made a teddy bear from my late husband’s Scoutmaster shirt. It was difficult, but I made it and it was adorable! I gifted it to his parents. They loved it!             I made that with his one and only Scou...

            I drove into the all-familiar driveway, now hidden among the apartment buildings surrounding it. The familiar church building with the high steeple, once standing proudly in a wide-open field, in the last decade stood amidst the modern apartment buildings, often hard to find unless you were specifically looking for it. When the building was first erected, there was hardly anything surrounding it but a few homes and a pig farm next door. There were many a Sunday morning where you would pull into the parking lot and exit from your car to the wafting smell of pig poo and the sound of squealing. But now, as I pulled into the parking lot, grass reaching out high between the cracks, all that remained is a makeshift fence and a “No Trespassing” sign. A little, wooden shed, sticking out amidst the high grass the only building on the property. The Iowa City Church of Christ was struck by lightning and burned to the ground on what would ha...

  When someone passes, friends and family struggle to know what to do to show they care and how to reach out. I wanted to mention a few things that helped me when I lost my husband, Ed, in the hope that it might help someone, anyone, be there when they know someone struggling with a loss. The first thing I want to mention is the meals. Especially the food that was brought over the week of his passing leading into the funeral. I had so many people in and out, and family staying, it was a big relief to not worry about food. And one person brought sandwich fixings--bread, deli meats, condiments, it was great for allowing people at my apartment to fix a sandwich if they were hungry. Priceless. Someone arranged a meal sign up platform, like TakeThemaMeal.com or Meal Train. I don’t remember which, but it was wonderful to have the meals arranged after the funeral. It helped with a physical need that I did not have the ability to verbalize, but definitely had the need. People deliv...

            As I showered and washed off the dust from the 8 ½ hours of driving, I reflected on the days spent at the family reunion in Grantsburg, Wisconsin. It was AMAZING! There is something about being around people who knew my mom and my sister, which fosters a deep bond in a way few people can. People who knew my grandparents and my other aunts and uncles. Those who knew my sister that passed away decades ago in a motorcycle accident. And those who knew my husband, who I lost only five years ago. When we are all together, we laugh, we cry, we tease each other. We talk about things that happened when we were young—different cousinly perspectives on things that happened while we were growing up. We talk about each of our paths after those reminiscent days, and funny things like all of us and our **ahem** mixed appreciation of Grandpa Finazzi’s iconic black chest hair sticking out in great tufts from within his white t-shirt. Our family often ...