Following is a letter to Paul from Ann's dear Aunt Ann Patrice Seeler at Ann Patrice Prebys' internment.

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October 11, 2007

Hail Dear Paul,

Cousin Marc and I are back from a few days in South Bend where we, in family, attended Ann's memorial on October 4. Her ashes were interred in the Prebys family cemetery. It's a spacious, lovely, pastoral setting, the kind in which Ann would have loved to have found a little cottage. Father Henry, a priest from Africa, who has been here as a liaison for his village there and is beloved by his small parish here, blessed the services.

Here is what I said at Ann's grave:

  "What is the anniversary of loss?
The wishbone snapped, and I clung to the smallest piece
What is the anniversary of loss?
A catechism that stops and starts and never ends."
                     May it be as Ann so hoped:
"Remembrance is the sweetest flower
        of all the world's perfuming
Memory guards it sun and shower
       Friendship keeps it blooming."

The first quote is the last stanza of a poem by Carrie Etter that I recently found. The second quote is the verse that Ann cross-stitched in silk on linen and sent to me in 1985. I was struck by how perfectly the last stanza of Carrie Etter's poem describes my continuing journey with Ann toward an ever clearer sense of the two of us through the "stops and starts that never end." So, indeed, "Remembrance is the sweetest flower..." Sweet, bitter-sweet, sweet, bitter-sweet - ever toward clarity.

There you are, Paul, you two who met, gorgeous youths in gorgeous California, lovers, side-by-side for thirty years through thicks and thins.

Lovely Ann, whose caritas for her fellow creatures never wavered, slipped herself and all of us free to see her and ourselves.

Love,

Ann [Seeler]

 

Eulogies for Ann.
Lynda Wilson
Aunt Ann Seeler
Braille Institute's Angela Nowlin and SB City Councilwoman Iya Falcone talk about Ann with Paul

Ann's Braille Institute Decorations



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