I think will be our last Caring Bridge update, and will include various items of information and some of my thoughts.

The Memorial service for Dad was a glorious celebration of his life and faith!  The music was outstanding!  The church choir sang “God Is Our Refuge” accompanied by piano and two trumpets. This anthem was the one the choir sang on the last Sunday Dad sang with the choir.  The trumpets also accompanied the congregation singing two hymns, one of which was a favorite of Dad’s — “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.”  Ann Posey played the organ and piano masterfully. Dad’s close young friends, the Fulks were both involved — Carolyn with a reading and David with a powerful solo, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”  Stories about Dad were shared by David, by Kathy Moore Dunn, and the minister, Jason Edwards, as he wove stories into his marvelous message.

The church family, our friends, and our relatives all supported us and laughed and cried with us.  It felt great.  After the service just the family (43 people I think) went outside to the Memorial Garden on the church lawn to spread a small portion of Dad’s ashes.  Jason read scripture and said a prayer, then Aunt Lou, Bobby, Tom and I spread the ashes on the ground.  It didn’t strike me as sad and that will certainly be a nice place to go sit and meditate in the future (when the weather is nicer). We will bury the urn with the rest of Dad’s ashes at Fee Fee Cemetery in St. Louis at a later date.  

Then we went inside where a committee of women, some of whom are friends of mine, served us a delicious supper.  We were surrounded by many family members all weekend and thus we had a terrific family reunion!

Below is a link which includes a link to see a video of the full memorial service.  This Google site also includes a link to hear the Story Corps interview that Carolyn Fulk did with Dad last August.  Thank you, Carolyn; this is something we will treasure forever!
https://sites.google.com/view/rememberingbill/home

If if you would like to see the slide show of photos we put together (it played during the Visitation Saturday), you can go to where the obituary is: dignitymemorial.org/visit/billriggs.  Scroll past the obituary and the comments (such nice comments), and you will begin to see the photos.  Keep clicking on “load more” to see all 160 of them plus a good video clip of Tom singing his song “Moral Compass” and Dad giving a little wave at the end of the song; that was the day before he died and the last time he was up in a chair.

I will end with this:
Dad wrote a Spiritual Autobiography in 2010.  My brothers and I had never read it until recently.  Fortunately, the minister had it to refer to during his message.  Dad writes that he doesn’t recall a time in his life when he didn’t believe in God.  He also writes:
”The great tragedy of my life was Joanne’s suicide in 1978.  That was certainly a major crisis, but I was able to follow the advice in Psalm 55:22, ‘Cast your burdens on the Lord, and He will sustain you.’ I am convinced that a major way He sustains us is through the care, love, and support of family and friends.  It was through the relationships, not only with Jesus Christ, but also with those family members, church and other friends that I have been ‘sustained.’”

There is a line toward the end of his Spiritual Autobiography in which he writes, “My calling seems to have evolved from being a religious educator to being an encourager, which is what I attempt to do through words and hugs and prayer.”  We were impressed to see Dad doing that — being an encourager — all the way to the end of his life.  Even during the time of being virtually helpless in the hospital and nursing homes his last few weeks, he showed great kindness to all the aides, nurses, doctors, cleaning people, and any others who came into the room to help him.  He attempted to learn each one’s name until it became too hard because there were so many of them.  If they changed him, turned him, helped him up, he said thank you every time and he often patted one of their arms and said, “You do a good job.”  One of the nurses in the hospital told him he had been a real blessing to her.

What an inspiration!  His love lives on.
”Blessings on you.”
 I