The Widower

Time to Disassemble Those Memorial Display Boards

It was time. Actually, way past time.

For my wife Cheryl’s funeral service in March 2024, I assembled five large display boards with photos and memorabilia. I had help. Our good friends Don and Barb invited me to supper one night and agreed to help organize and tape down dozens of photos and documents. Neighbor Marlene spent an hour applying her beautiful handwriting to label each board—“Friends,” “Achievements,” “Early Years” and two for “Family.”

Many people commented on the displays. However, a few well-wishers didn’t get a chance to see them—a dear elderly friend who didn’t feel up to attending the service, friends who were on vacation, a cousin who was ill, another cousin who was on a mission trip, and my niece and her husband, who didn’t attend the service because Lyndsey was expecting and the funeral fell on her due date.

I promised to preserve and share the displays with them the next time we got together. As so often happens, life got in the way. Months passed, even the first anniversary of Cheryl’s death, before I managed to connect with each of these people.

Finally, everyone who didn’t see the display boards got chances to view and appreciate them.

More months passed. The boards collected dust in the basement. Last month, I kept moving them as I piled belongings in the basement when we pulled out all the carpeting and had the hardwood floors refinished.

So this past week, I decided it disassemble the boards. My girlfriend Jennifer offered to help, which I appreciated. That took the edge off what might otherwise have been a quiet, solemn, heart-tugging process.

As the photos came off the boards, the memories flowed. From the “Family” board, there was Cheryl, smiling with our late cairn terrier, Trapper, on her blanket-covered lap.

There we were, posing with our granddaughter Lexi at her First Communion.

There we were in 2012 on a stone wall overlooking the waters of Door County with my mom and my dad, who died in 2017.

There Cheryl was sitting with our grandson in front of the Magic Kingdom castle on the trip we took with Remy to Disney World when he turned 5.

There she was with her siblings and their parents, both long gone.

There we were with her brother Skip and his wife Colly at the Capital One Bowl in Orlando in 2007.

“Who’s that with Cheryl?” Jennifer asked, holding up a photo.

“That’s my nephew Geoff, at his graduation party,” I said.

From the “Friends” board, there stood Cheryl with three card club friends. Only two of the women in the photo remain alive.

There was a young Cheryl with her best friend, Bernice, a cake proclaiming it Bernice’s 40^th birthday.

There we were in 2021 with good friends Brian and Terri at a public garden in Duluth, Minn. We’d paid for a “Grand Alaska Tour” with them, then scrapped it when covid hit; that journey to Minnesota’s north shore was our first vacation as we came out of the pandemic.

There we were with our dear friends Lorraine and Catherine, who booked the same 1998 Hawaii trip on which Cheryl and I got married. The two neighboring widows became impromptu “bridesmaids” at our Maui nuptials.

There was Cheryl in September 2023, five months before she entered a memory care facility, with our friends Tim and Sheri in Jackson Square in New Orleans on our last trip together. Cheryl was smiling minutes after she let the ice cream tumble from her cone into the gutter.

The “Early Years” photos sparked much interest. One showed Cheryl, at about age 5, in a tiny dance dress in front of the family Christmas tree.

In a 1966 photo, Cheryl sported a beehive hairdo.

In another, she appeared as a fetching bridesmaid in her older brother Skip’s wedding.

The photo from that board that sparked the most interest, however, was one of Cheryl at about age 14, smiling and with hair blowing. My sister thought she resembled actress Reese Witherspoon. One of my cousins thought Cheryl looked like a young actress Julia Stiles. Cheryl’s son Adam had never seen that photo, which we’d framed and kept in our bedroom.

Two people at her memorial service thought this striking photo of my wife Cheryl at about age 14 resembled well-known actresses.

The “Achievements” board stirred interest, too. While cleaning the basement months earlier, I’d found Cheryl’s 1979 teaching license, and a letter from Sister Dorinda, principal at St. William’s School. She explained that while Cheryl’s seven-year position of reading teacher was being eliminated, she would recommend Cheryl for any teaching job in the primary or intermediate grades.

“Cheryl showed a sincere interest in each child that she worked with,” Sister Dorinda wrote, and I wasn’t surprised to read that.

One of two “Family” display boards we showed at Cheryl’s memorial service, this one depicting her side of our blended family.

That board included scenes from Cheryl’s high school yearbooks. Her classmate Stan visited several times in her last weeks of life, and he copied the pages. Cheryl often spoke a sentence or two of French whenever the subject of France came up. But I didn’t realize that she was not only in Janesville High School’s French Club, but also on the Home Economics Club and that she was involved with the Student Council.

The boards, stripped except for remnants of tape, went out with last week’s trash. However, like in other families who’ve lost loved ones, the photos and memorabilia will long be reminders of Cheryl, the active, vibrant woman I married before dementia robbed her of those interests and that sparkle.