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Saying Goodbye to My Aunt Dolores at Hillside Cemetery
Elizabeth Weintraub, back row w/sunglasses, with sister Margie, Aung Barb, Uncle Bill and relatives.
The family on my mother’s side are French and German. Highly efficient people, especially my aunts and uncles. These people know how to get things done in an efficient manner, and maybe that’s where I get part of my organizational abilities, now that I think about it. Like, when a client is not present for an appointment, I don’t give them a polite 15 minutes or whatever before calling them. If they are supposed to meet me at noon, and I’m there at noon, and they are not there, I will call them right away. Grass does not grow under my feet.
Which means it’s a good thing my Aunt Pat called my sister yesterday. We were sitting in my sister’s living room in Minneapolis, chatting about nothing in particular when my sister’s phone rang. “Are you coming to Hillside Cemetery?” What? Hey, we thought it was 1 PM. Well, no, it was 11 AM and somehow my sister did not know this. I think the French / German efficiency genes skipped being passed down to my sister. Ask her. She’ll tell you. I got all the good genes in the family, according to her.
We threw on clothes, dashed out the door and found them all sitting outside near the office at Hillside Cemetery. It’s amazing, I thought, how my Great Uncle Dick looks exactly like my Great Grandpa Joe, and my Uncle Bill is almost a dead ringer for my Grandpa Hank. When people get older, they change and begin to resemble other family members, and when it’s dead family members, it’s even more eerie. Further, we are a really small in stature family. I’m not used to being almost the tallest.
Aunt Barb, my mother’s sister, prepared remarks and read them. The Hillside Cemetery made a special exception to let us spread ashes there because ever since my mother died 15 years ago, there have been too many people spreading ashes at Hillside Cemetery. This means Aunt Barb will not be joining her sisters.
Turns out my Uncle Bill lives in Reno. My face brightened, hey, I live in Sacramento, I volunteered, hoping he would say we could meet up or get together sometime. But then I temporarily forgot that I was in the middle of a Christopher Guest movie. That was unlikely to happen. What did happen was Uncle Bill said, yes, he had been to Sacramento and didn’t care for it. Besides, it’s not the best way to get to Washington, taking I-80 to get to I-5 when Highway 89 was a more direct route.
It was nice to have closure and say goodbye to Aunt Dolores. She was 95. She had traveled all over the United States in her RV, which she drove. She didn’t need no stinkin’ GPS or map book for directions, either. She knew every back road and RV park.
After Aunt Barb finished her remarks, we hightailed it off to Jax Cafe in northeast Minneapolis, one of those restaurants that stood the test of time over the years, old-school, rich carpeting and polished wood walls, and pretty darn good Polish pierogi, among other delights. Aunt Dolores bought us lunch, said Aunt Barb. Of course, I had the walleye, there, yah. We listened to my cousin’s daughter share a long story about why she didn’t sign up to work at Amway. It was a really long story, so long my Aunt Barb called her a Chatty Cathy. Being a millennial, at 23, my second cousin didn’t get the joke. We will probably see them again tomorrow before I head back to Sacramento and to my normal life as a Sacramento Realtor.
Visit to Minneapolis to Say Goodbye to My Brother
Elizabeth Weintraub and her brother John Burgard in Minneapolis.
When my sister and I checked into the hotel that used to be the Minneapolis Athletic Club, the clerk cheerily probed into our personal business, asking the purpose of our visit. Without missing a heartbeat, I said, “We’re here to watch our brother die.” Which is true. This clerk really has no business being so superficially perky with guests and asking such questions of intimacy. He will think twice before he asks that kind of thing again. He must not be from Minneapolis.
People. They mean well. But they don’t know what to say or how to say it.
My brother is not doing well. He will die soon. Much sooner than we had thought. He has already survived almost 3 year with soft cell Sarcoma, but things have progressed. I’ll spare you the details. It’s time to say goodbye to my brother.
He had signed a birthday card for me, and handed it to me himself. It was scrawled the way a child writes, but I know it was his penmanship. My sister made him a “Shore Lunch” which is a special breading for walleye, fried with boiled potatoes and onions, also fried. Much better than I’m making it sound.
The high points of my trip are sellers calling and emailing, asking if I will list their homes. Of course I will. It puts my life into perspective and helps me maneuver the tragedies life throws. It would have been much better had I not left my iPad on the plane, but that’s a small price to pay.
I also drove my sister to Home Depot today and bought her several new faucets because her kitchen and bathroom faucet drip. I installed the bathroom faucet with my own two hands. Will tackle the kitchen faucet tomorrow. Could not believe she did not own a basin wrench. Well, she does now. We both said goodbye to my brother.
Family Visit with My Brother at Curran’s in Minneapolis
John Burgard, Elizabeth Weintraub and Margaret Burgard at Curran’s Restaurant
My sister-in-law’s godfather is one of the owner’s of Curran’s Restaurant, according to my brother, John, which is one of the reasons we stopped for lunch at the old spot on Nicollet at 42nd. This restaurant has been in Minneapolis since the 1940s, back when it began as a drive-in. There are not a lot of old places left anymore, like with any progressive city, the old goes away to make room for the new. We also stopped at Curran’s for lunch because I really craved liver and onions, but turned out that was not served until dinner. Well, grilled cheese sandwiches at Curran’s were fine in the cold, rainy weather of Minneapolis.
Especially since we intended to, pardon my pun, grill my brother about why he stopped talking to us all those years ago, all those years that were wasted, and why he waited until the doctors at the U of M gave him less than a year to live. Cancer waits for nobody. His response was to let it go. Even when I promised we would not make one comment nor further discuss the reasons if he would just tell us, and I begged. But he refused. Probably because he knows we would discuss it, analyze it, tear it apart into shreds, argue about it, apologize for it, just like any other dysfunctional family would do.
My sister said he would respond like this because she has asked him as well. We figured if we waited until after the chemo infusion which, by the way, is fueled in part by alcohol, and all of the pain medication was absorbed into his system, if we waited until he was a bit loopy, well, that was the time to pounce with our questions. Curran’s was as good a place as any. Sort of like truth serum.
My sister also said she has suggested that he write a letter to us, laying out the reasons, but I don’t want a letter. Especially if I receive the letter after he dies. Because then I can’t respond to it and it will haunt me to my death, that being what I could have done to be a better sister. The people in a booth or so over must have thought we were nuts, given the topic of our conversation. But that’s the thing about family, you can pretty much say whatever you think and it is accepted.
Later, my sister confided that it’s entirely possibly my brother does not remember why he stopped communicating with us. It was so long ago. And that’s the premise I believe I will adopt.
I said my goodbyes. I am back home in Sacramento today and ready to finish out the week tackling Sacramento real estate. Will say I have developed a lot of compassion for my clients in these types of situations.
Assessing an Accurate Picture to Manage Expectations
Elizabeth Weintraub and niece Laura Burgard at Al Vente in Minneapolis
My sister Margie says I have an aura about me, a presence, she says, that makes people want to do nice things for me. If it is true, and I am not certain that it is, I wouldn’t know it, I suppose, because it’s awfully nice, I have to admit, to have things go your own way most of the time. It could also be because I am completely grateful when nice things happen out of the blue, seemingly for no reason. But I also know that I can’t force good things to happen.
My niece Laura says people instinctively realize when they meet me that they should go out of their way to make certain I am happy. She thinks I have a magic touch. I’m not sure where she gets that impression. Although, at dinner last night, at this lovely French restaurant, Café Levain, near 48th and Chicago in south Minneapolis, our server, noticing we had finished our bottle of Rothschild white bordeaux dashed breathlessly to our table, carting a mostly empty bottle of the same wine, “Look what I found in the kitchen!” She poured a bit into our glasses.
See, I’ve never had that happen before. But my niece doesn’t know that. We all have our views of the world. And it’s our views that shape our expectations and help me, especially in my real estate business, to help manage expectations of my clients. In order to do that, though, you’ve got to accurately assess the picture. You can’t pick an isolated circumstance and figure that is the norm.
Experience is what gives me an edge. I can often accurately predict a future happening based on the present circumstances because I’ve been through so much a million times. When a person hires me to be his or her Sacramento Realtor, they are also gaining my experience. It’s a unique experience, unlike anybody’s. But I rely on it and my clients can too. I manage expectations well.
