Funeral Program for Augusta Hicks Bayonne

I decided to visit my mother on June 23rd before I left for Northern Ecuador. As I was leaving Spokane on a 6:30 AM flight, my husband received the news that Mom had passed in her sleep. I found out at the New Orleans International Airport when I called to tell my husband that I had arrived safely around 2 PM. Mom had Alzheimer's but I  didn't know that she was critically ill.

The funeral was on June 28th, the day I initially planned to leave for Ecuador. My flight was rescheduled and I was able to catch my group before they left Quito on June 23rd.

The church was packed. I did not know that Mom knew so many people. When I thought about it later, I realized that Mom knew a lot of people because she worked as a teacher, a social worker and volunteered at her church and in the community.

I noted in Mom's biography that she attended the canonization of Blessed Katherine Drexel in Rome in 2000. When she was a young student at St. Monica Catholic School, she had the opportunity to read her composition, "Building for Eternity," to Mother Drexel. The pastor of Blessed Trinity Catholic Church was not able to officiate at Mom's funeral because he was in Uganda. The substitute celebrant was Father John Cisewski, the principal of St. Katherine Catholic School! We could not have planned this because we did not know there was a St. Katherine Drexel Catholic School.