Picking up mom's stuff

Friday, November 29, 2019
I took the day off.  I wrote an e-mail to Japan.  I wrote e-mails to friends.  I talked to someone at the funeral home regarding details of the cremation.  Chris came over around 9:40 and we picked out an urn for mom and a backup.  Chris treated me to breakfast.  We went to St. Michael's to clean out mom's room.  The adaptive clothing, St. Michael's was happy to take.  I left other stuff on the counter as well.  We had 2 large garbage bags and two smaller bags of stuff.
I gave the Chinese lady mom's pink giraffe. We cried together.   I left mom's lap blanket for Jackie.  A lot of the staff gave me a hug and I thanked them for looking after mom.
I went to Finance to check and see if there was anything I had to do.
I saw Ming and I gave him and hug and thanked him and burst into tears.  Embarrassing.  Chris put his arm around me.  Chris dropped me off.
Ethel came over with cookies.  She read over the contract from the funeral home.  Everything looked in order.  I signed it electronically and sent it off.  I mentioned the part in the contract about not receiving the ashes and Certificate of Death for 10-14 days.  It seemed long.  I thought the Gotos had their funeral about a week later.  Ethel said she didn't remember an urn so I thought maybe a photo would be sufficient.
Ethel talked about how she thought an MC was a good idea.  Choices for MC: Frank Seki, Steve Kamachi, Colleen Goto? Ethel volunteered to be a greeter and collect envelopes.  I thought Steve would be a good person to make a speech about mom. Charlene could do a speech about mom's history with Sumi and Aunti Reiko.  Sumi could sing a song.  Ethel thought maybe Carol could pick up sushi.
Charlene came over after dinner.  She suggested places to hold the Celebration of Life.  She strongly preferred the Queensborough Community Centre.  I felt it would take more work to organize something there.  We would need audio-visual equipment for karaoke, speeches and a slide show.
The other place we considered was Kearny.  Charlene helped me to sort through the bags of mom's belongings.  She took some away to go to thrift stores and for a toy drive.