Bringing Live Music back into the Living Room

Victoria from her obituary at the local paper.

I mentioned a few days ago that I had two Memorial Services I wanted to go to yesterday afternoon. The one I actually went to was for Victoria Bolles, a friend from the West Gallery Quire.

Victoria from her Facebook Page

I didn't know Victoria that well until I started sending anyone who wanted to read them long emails about Bonnie's condition. She was an enthusiastic member of the West Gallery Quire -- I may have first noticed her when she turned out to know how to pronounce Welsh. She and her husband George were the first people who started bringing food to share at the breaks, which is now an established custom. There was a Shape Note Singing that would normally have been small, but robust, but for some reason the day I showed up there was only me, Bonnie, Victoria and George for quite a while at the beginning. This meant that I had to sing the lead without any assistance, and they were all quite helpful about finding songs that were suitable for that.

When I set up the bonnienews mailing list, Victoria subscribed even though I don't think she knew Bonnie any better than she knew me. At one point she sent me a very supportive email:

I wish I could say how my heart goes out to you as you keep your steadfast watch by Bonnie's side. You are wise and strong, and Bonnie could not be more blessed. I'm not sure what to do about visiting Bonnie, as she does not know George or me well and might find our presence unsettling. But I have a card I picked out for her recently, so I'll send that, and keep sending cards as I find them.

And I'll think of her, and hold her in my heart, and be grateful for the time I've known her, and send her love. I guess that's the best anyone who's not close can do. Love is all we have.

That mail was sent on March 12, 2008, and the correspondence it led to ended up with Victoria organizing a group of shape note singers to go to Bonnie in the hospice and sing in her room for over an hour. Unfortunately this didn't happen until early May, which was about two weeks before she died. A week or two earlier she would have been able to show more signs of appreciation.

After that, there was a correspondence about what kind of support she could give me with all the work I would have to do about arranging the funeral. She was so sympathetic I complained about all the phone calls that were involved, and she offered to just do some for me. This is what I told her I appreciated most when I saw her after she got sick, and what I told George I remembered most fondly about her at the Memorial Service yesterday. Everybody who wants to be sympathetic says, "Let me know if there's anything I can do," but Victoria did enough sympathetic listening to actually come up with a good plan for something she could do that was helpful. Here's how some of that email went:

Victoria: Peace and strength to you,

Laura Thanks. So far, the strength has mainly been necessary for yelling at Pioneer Investments customer support people, who don't seem to know anything about what they're supposed to do with a Power of Attorney, and they change their story if you yell at them hard enough. But I will need strength to deal with undertakers, funerals, and real estate agents in the future.

Victoria: I will be happy to do anything to help you deal with "undertakers, funerals and real estate agents" when the time comes. Because I will not have been subjected to the constant stress you've been handling it might be a bit easier for me to take one some of that stuff. It's up to you; just remember that if you ask me, I'll say yes. The one thing you need to bear in mind is that I don't drive, so anything that requires getting someplace by car can become a problem. But a lot of what you mention can be done via phone.

I had a close friend of Bonnie's who was a member of the church Bonnie wanted her funeral at helping me with those arrangements, and undertakers turn out to be pretty good at not making unreasonable demands on the recently bereaved. But Victoria did a lot of research for me into how to go about donating Bonnie's car to WGBH, she ordered the floral arrangement for the funeral, and found a name of a real estate agent.

I was glad to hear the remembrances of people who'd known her in other contexts at the funeral. I'm sorry I didn't get to hear her Cemetery Tours of the Wyoming Cemetery in Malden where her ashes are buried, or know more about the writing group she was a founding member of. The biggest laugh of the afternoon (no, big laughs aren't what most people who give remembrances at Memorial Services go for) was from someone she'd worked with at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. He said, "I was Victoria's boss -- what a silly idea." I was sitting where I could see George, and he was laughing even harder than a lot of other people.

People complained when I arranged Bonnie's funeral that there were seven hymns. They hadn't been to a Sacred Harp Memorial Lesson, which is what Victoria had. From the Interment of Ashes at 11:30 AM until 4 PM, we were singing at least half the time, and we must have sung 40 or so hymns. I headed this posting "RIP", but the Sacred Harp, "And I'll sing 'Hallelujah', when I arrive at home," with which we ended the service, seems more appropriate to how I imagine Victoria arriving in Heaven.