Farewell to Ed, who made lieutenant before retiring from the Port Authority police, who remarried a few years after being widowed and had a 20-year happy marriage with my godmother, Marilyn, and who was a veteran of WW 2 Pacific theater (Phillippines). A lifetime of service to others and a great sense of humor, slipped away over time via Alzheimer's, which steals your loved one's personality and mind before finally stopping his autonomic functions. The farewell was to the man we knew and loved, who was trapped in a container which didn't even allow him to say goodbye properly. The farewell was properly done, with two police from the honor guard the day of the viewing, who delivered the final salute, with a police piper playing him into the church with Dawning of the Day (an unusual selection, overtones of Raglan Road or perhaps William Bloat), with a mass and choir, with the piper playing him out to the hearse on Amazing Grace (more appropriate), and with two other police honor guard saluting on entry and exit. Finally, at the mausoleum, two US Army honor guard saluted him into the building, played taps and conducted the flag folding, presenting it to the widow, who will send it on to his son-in-law who's now the acting paterfamilias, to be left to one of the grandchildren's households.

That was all done well, very appropriately, very movingly. Ed's grands and his son-in-law will have some good and moving memories of the process, which spanned two days. And it was very good to see them, to get to know them a bit; Ed was proud of them while he was lucid, and they deserved to be proud of him -- of who he had been and what he had lived through.