Here's a photo of my father's mother, Ruth Joan Harrington (center), all of eighteen years old, one year away from eloping with her sweetheart. His middle-class Protestant and her working-class Irish Catholic parents didn't approve of their union. So, when they were nineteen, Herb dropped out of college and eloped with little Ruthie, and they started their family in Wilmington, Delaware, almost immediately.

Their impetuousness never haunted them; he joined the Navy in the 1940s, and served during World War II, though he never left the States. After his discharge, they left Wilmington for Pittsburgh, where he worked for decades as an engineer and she raised their three children. They bought a summer house in Sandbridge Beach, Virginia, and moved there after he retired.

Ru died last Friday, six months after Bert passed away and three days before her 83rd birthday.

E and I rode to Virginia Beach with my brother, talking about the war and taking turns playing songs: Oumou Sangare, Slayer, the Foo Fighters, Wilco, the Who, Sigur Ros, Metallica, Johnny Cash, Danzig, Blink 182.

We spent two days in Virginia Beach with my parents, my two aunts and their husbands, my five cousins and two of their spouses. We stayed at an oceanfront hotel and kept the balcony door open so we could smell and hear the surf. We emptied out Ru's apartment. E and I accepted matching nightstands, a coffee table, a rocking chair, a magazine rack, a sewing box.

My father took home the china he bought and shipped to Ru from Japan when he was a young officer in the Navy. Has any other sailor loved his mother so well?

At her service, a not-quite full-on Catholic mass, my dad read something he wrote about the many names she was known by: Ruth to her parents; Ruthie to her husband, or Rufus when he was feeling playful; Ru to her grandchildren.

I read some words the father chose from the Book of Wisdom. I tried to find meaning in them the way that Ru would have. I was anxious and irritable before the service, and markedly relaxed afterward, and I was drawn to compare church services to yoga: You must be present, and still; you are expected to concentrate on or at least pay attention to what's happening, whether it's your physical position, the spoken words of the sermon, or a hymn; but at the same time, you may let your mind wander, contemplate things, and let them go. I also thought about how, sometimes, if you smile when you are feeling bad, the physical act of smiling makes you feel happier. In the same way, going through the motions of a religious ceremony, even when you don't believe, can surprise you with meaning and comfort.

Ru was someone you hope to be like when you grow up, not because of her career -- she never had a job outside the home -- or any creative accomplishment -- she liked to spend her free time sitting on the beach, reading books from the Bookmobile, playing bridge or Yahtzee. But she was the sort of person who simply always made everyone around her feel good.

We drove away from Virginia Beach -- for the last time? -- in Ru's 1998 Ford Contour. She drove it to mass every Sunday at St. John the Apostle. It has 15,000 miles on it. E pointed out the obvious long before I did: We must name it for her. I find I can't call it Ru, because that was my name for her, but she had so many other names to choose from. I'm sure we'll find the right one.