Peg Ostrander
Lorraine Pfeiffer
friend of Margaret
Contact
born Jan 26, 1954Died April 22, 2023
31linked records
26mentions
11questions
2011–2026saved
What the account says about Lorraine
57 records, oldest first2011
Jan 8
Feb 1
Hawkstone Readers, February, at Lorraine's. "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" (Hel…
…en Simonson). Liked by all eight of us who came.
Next: March 1 at my house, "Cutting for Stone." 541 pages.
April 5 at Ruth's, "Olive Kitteridge."
Feb 3
No school yesterday and none today. The snow began Tuesday afternoon, and by We…
…dnesday morning the drift against the garage door reached the handle. R. measured 17 inches on the picnic table with the folding rule and wrote it on the calendar. He cleared our drive and Marlene's with the snowblower and came in with ice in his eyebrows.
Eight of us were at Lorraine's on Tuesday night for "Major P…
2012
Mar 25
Feed her on Saturdays. And don't give her a name grander than your own.
Mar 27
Back from the state conference. Lorraine and I ran the swap table again, the tw…
…enty-seventh year by her count. On the last morning she handed me a pint jar with a square of cloth over the top and said, "Feed her on Saturdays." It is sourdough starter, a piece of the one she has kept going since 1994.
I have named it Sigrid, after Sigrid Undset, since I am six hundred pages into her. Lorraine s…
2017
Jun 2
They gave me a party after school, in the library, with the tables pushed back.…
…I had asked for none.
Patricia spoke. She said that in thirteen years she had never once found the library locked when the bell rang, and that I had taught a generation of children to say "May I renew this?" Lorraine spoke after her and told the story of the 1994 conference and the hotel fire alarm, which I had aske…
Jun 12
The first Monday. At 7:45, when the first bell rings, I was standing in my own…
…kitchen holding a dish towel.
R. came in from the shop at ten for coffee and found me reading at the table in daylight. He looked at me over his glasses and said, "Now you know."
Otherwise I have walked Gus around the loop, slowly, at his pace; put the spices back in alphabetical order; telephoned Lorraine, who lau…
Sep 5
First day of school. I am at the cabin, and at 7:45 this morning I was on the d…
…ock in a sweater with my coffee, with mist coming off the lake and one loon, the young one, alone now that the parents have gone.
Thirty-one Septembers running I have unlocked that library on this morning. I had expected to mind. What I felt, when the hour came, was the absence of a weight I had stopped noticing, th…
Dec 5
Hawkstone Readers, 2017. We were eleven until August and are ten now: Bonnie Sa…
…ther has moved to Texas.
Jan. 3 - "The Underground Railroad" - Nan's
Feb. 7 - "News of the World" - Connie's
March 7 - "Hillbilly Elegy" - Lorraine's
April 4 - "Homegoing" - Ruth's
May 2 - "Evicted" - mine
June 6 - "The Radium Girls" - Dee's, in the garden
August 1 - "Anything Is Possible" - Marlene's
Sept. 5 - "Kil…
2019
Feb 22
Surgery yesterday, Dr. Rasmusson, in and out the same day. A plate and seven sc…
…rews. They numbed the whole arm from the shoulder, so that for twelve hours it lay beside me like something left in the bed by a stranger.
Still typing with one hand, but I have found the shift key.
Home by three. R. has made a chart of the pills. Lorraine came with soup and a book of large-print crosswords, as a j…
Mar 31
Lorraine has given me "The Library Book," about the fire at the Los Angeles pub…
…lic library in 1986. I read it in two days and telephoned her about every chapter.
The cast is off and a brace is on, and twice a week a young woman named Priya has me squeeze yellow putty until I could weep. The scar runs down the inside of the wrist, four inches, very neat.
The thyroid pill has gone up as well, o…
Dec 3
Hawkstone Readers, 2019. Sylvia Ihlenfeld moved to Minneapolis in June; Ellie B…
…reunig joined in April.
Jan. 8 - "Where the Crawdads Sing" - Marlene's
Feb. 5 - "Becoming" - Connie's
March 5 - "The Overstory" - Lorraine's
April 2 - "The Library Book" - Ruth's
May 7 - "Unsheltered" - mine
June 4 - "Normal People" - Dee's
August 6 - "Say Nothing" - Nan's
Sept. 3 - "City of Girls" - Ellie's
Oct. 1…
Dec 27
Christmas here, quietly, with Ellen's four. Birdie ate a wise man off the crèch…
…e, the wooden one.
I read "Olive, Again" in two sittings on Christmas afternoon while everyone else slept. Olive is old now, and has had a heart attack of her own, and is exactly as rude as ever.
Also this fall, in waiting rooms: "The Dutch House." A brother and sister who cannot stop driving back to look at the ho…
2020
Nov 7
No lutefisk dinner this year. I made lefse here, six dozen, with R. ricing the…
…potatoes at the kitchen table in an apron, with the radio on.
We drove them round this afternoon in packages of six and left them on porches: Marlene, Connie, Lorraine, the Nygaards, Pastor Kristin. I rang and went back to the car. Harlan Nygaard came out onto his step in his slippers and held the package up over hi…
Nov 8
No lutefisk dinner this year. Lefse made at home yesterday instead: six dozen.
Left on porches, in packages of six:
Marlene - Connie - Lorraine and Hal - Harlan and Betty Nygaard - Pastor Kristin - Dee - Ruth - Helen - Inez Rude - LaVonne Thorson - the Fosdals
2021
Oct 12
R. had his treadmill test this morning and passed, nine minutes with the wires…
…on and nothing to see. We were pleased with ourselves at lunch.
Lorraine telephoned at four. She said it in her reference-desk voice: it is ovarian cancer, it is not early, and they will operate on November 2 and give her chemotherapy after.
I asked what I could do. She said, "Come Thursday, and bring a book that i…
Oct 14
Lorraine. Surgery November 2, then six rounds of chemotherapy, three weeks apar…
…t.
- Thursdays. I come at 2 and stay until Hal is home.
- Books that are "not about anything." I have a stack: Barbara Pym, the Mapp and Lucia books, Wodehouse.
- The book club is told only what Lorraine wants told.
Nov 6
Lorraine's surgery was Tuesday. Five hours. Annette called me from the waiting…
…room and again at six: they took out everything they could see, and the surgeon is "pleased." She was asleep when I went on Thursday.
The lutefisk dinner came back, as a line of cars: 340 dinners in boxes, handed through windows in the church lot by the confirmation class in masks. We rolled all the same, six griddl…
Dec 28
A quiet Christmas. Dr. Aumann retires at the end of the month. He has looked in…
…to my mouth since 1987. A young woman is taking the practice and keeping Trish.
From Kate and Samir, a Kindle. It weighs nothing, and I will take it on airplanes. I still prefer paper.
The two best things I read this year. "Cloud Cuckoo Land" has a librarian in it who is eighty-six and puts on a play with five chil…
2022
Feb 13
Gulf Shores again, after a year away. Dottie's condo, the same blue couch. Jean…
…ette and Norm were at the door before we had the car unloaded, and Norm had the notebook.
I walk with R. in the mornings now, as far as the pier. He is slower than he was two years ago; the right knee has begun to give him a hitch that he says is nothing.
Lorraine telephones on Sundays between treatments. Four down…
Mar 27
Lorraine rang the bell on Thursday. Six treatments. The nurses clapped, she say…
…s, and she felt like a ship being launched. The scan is in three weeks. She came to lunch today in the green hat, ate everything, and took a loaf home. Hal ate too. He has driven her to every appointment since November.
My new passport came, good until 2032. Judy and I go to Norway in September, the two of us. R. sa…
Aug 21
Forty-five years yesterday, in Ephraim, room 6, which we had not seen since bef…
…ore the stent. R. cannot do the shore trail with his knee, so we drove to the places we used to walk to, and sat.
The knee will be replaced on November 8, by Dr. Rasmusson. R. asked him what the part is made of and was given a brochure.
Lorraine and Hal were with us at the cabin for the first week of the month. On…
Dec 6
Hawkstone Readers, 2022.
Jan. 4 - "The Sentence" - Ellie's
Feb. 1 - "Oh William!" - Connie's
March 1 - "The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek" - Marlene's
April 5 - "Small Things Like These" - Ruth's
May 3 - "French Braid" - mine
June 7 - "Sea of Tranquility" - Dee's
August 2 - "Lessons in Chemistry" - Nan's
Sept. 6 - "Horse" - Lorraine's (I wa…
Dec 11
"Lorraine's Garden": finished, and I will take it to her on the 23rd. No. 47.
A lap quilt, 54 x 68. Grandmother's Flower Garden hexagons, the 1 1/4-inch ones, pieced by hand over papers since March. Twenty-three flowers, each with a yellow centre, set in a green path.
Label: "For Lorraine, from Peg. Friends since 1986. No. 47."
Dec 27
Christmas here, on account of the knee, and all fourteen came, in shifts, over…
…six days. June is seventeen months old and unwrapped everything addressed to anybody. R. carved standing up, and was applauded. I bought myself a new tablet for the recipes and the bird calls.
Lorraine and Hal came for coffee on the 23rd. She is thin in the face again. I asked, and she said the number they watch is…
2023
Jan 18
The water heater let go on Monday night, all fifty gallons, across the basement…
…floor. R. found it on Tuesday at six in his slippers. Dan Tuckwell had a new one in by four o'clock, and I spent today carrying up wet boxes: the Christmas things, the children's school papers, and thirty years of National Geographic that R. will not let me discard even now.
Lorraine's scan was last Thursday, and it…
Jan 26
Lorraine is sixty-nine today. I took her to lunch at the Nordic Table, the two…
…of us, and she ordered the walleye in R.'s honor and ate a third of it.
She said, over the coffee: "I'd like you to do the talking at the funeral. Hal can't, and Annette shouldn't have to. Keep it under ten minutes. I've heard you at retirement parties." I said I would.
Then she asked what I was reading, and we tal…
Mar 21
Don't make that face. I've weeded the collection, that's all.
Mar 21
Lorraine has stopped the treatment. The harder drug did nothing but make her si…
…ck, and on Friday she told the oncologist that she would like to feel like herself for whatever there is. Hospice began yesterday. There is a bed in the front room, by the window, and a nurse who comes on Mondays and Thursdays and whenever Hal calls.
I went this afternoon. She was sitting up in the bed in a cardigan…
Mar 26
Lorraine. Hospice began Monday the 20th.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2 to 4. I read to her.
What she has asked: that I speak at the funeral, under ten minutes; that the book club be told now; that nobody bring lilies.
Apr 6
She cannot hold a book up any longer, so I read to her. I asked what she wanted…
…, expecting something improving, and she said "The Wind in the Willows," which she read aloud to the third grade at Stony Brook every spring for thirty years and has nearly by heart. I do a chapter a visit. She corrects my Toad.
Today was the river and the picnic. She had her eyes shut, and I thought she was asleep…
Apr 13
She sleeps through most of the visit now. I read anyway; Annette says she is ca…
…lmer for a voice.
When she was awake today she had business. She has given me three things, and had Hal bring them in so that she could see me take them. Her own copy of the book I am reading her, with her pencil in the margins from thirty springs. One drawer of the old card catalog from Stony Brook, the oak one, S…
Apr 15
Two starters now. Lorraine gave me hers on Thursday. Ray has labelled the jars…
…S (Sigrid) and S Sr.
The Saturday routine, for both:
FEEDING (Saturday morning, before anything else)
- Take the jar from the refrigerator. Pour off all but about 2 tablespoons. (The poured-off part goes into pancakes or the compost, not down the drain.)
- Add 1/2 cup flour (half bread flour, half whole wheat) and…
Apr 18
She did not wake today. Her sister Vivian has come from Janesville and sleeps o…
…n the sofa. The nurse was there when I arrived, and took me into the kitchen and said, kindly and without softening it, that it will be this week.
I read the chapter anyway. It was the one where they go out on the river before dawn to look for the lost child, and find him. I had forgotten that it was in there. I got…
Apr 20
Is it Thursday? Then you ought to be sorting.
Apr 20
I finished the book this afternoon. Two chapters, straight through, because I w…
…as not sure of another Tuesday. She did not open her eyes. At the very end, when I had shut it, her hand moved on the blanket and I took it, and she said, quite clearly, "Is it Thursday?" I said it was. She said, "Then you ought to be sorting."
That was all. I sat until the light went.
I am writing it down tonight,…
Apr 22
Annette telephoned at ten past six. Lorraine died at half past four this mornin…
…g, in the front room, with Hal and Annette and Vivian there. She was sixty-nine.
I had been awake since four. I do not attach anything to that; I am often awake at four.
R. came down and found me at the kitchen table and did not say anything. He put his hand on the back of my neck and left it there. Then he fed the…
Apr 23
The state conference, the old hotel with the orange carpet. Lorraine was behind…
…the swap table, about forty, in the corduroy blazer. I was the age I am. She did not seem to find that odd.
She handed me a jar across the table. It was empty and clean. I said so. She said, "Well, you have to feed her," in the voice for a patron who has not read the sign. Then the fire alarm went, the 1994 one, and…
Apr 25
My physical was today, and I went, because it was on the calendar. Dr. Raghavan…
…asked how I was, and I told her about Saturday, and she put down the pen. She gave me the name of a grief group that meets on Wednesday evenings and said, "When you want it. If you want it." Everything else about me is as it was.
The funeral is Saturday at eleven, at Bethany Methodist. I have written four pages and…
Apr 27
Lorraine. Born January 26, 1954; died Saturday, April 22, 2023.
- Funeral: Saturday the 29th, 11:00, Bethany Methodist. Lunch after, in their hall.
- I speak after the second hymn. Under ten minutes; at home it runs 8 minutes 50. A second copy in Ray's pocket.
- No flowers. Memorials go to the library at Stony Brook Elementary, for picture books. Our cheque is written.
- Lemon bar…
Apr 28
Annual wellness. BP 124/76, weight 150. TSH 2.2. I told her about Lorraine, who…
…died on Saturday. Dr. Raghavan gave me the name of a grief group and did not push.
Apr 29
Lorraine's funeral was this morning. Bethany was full to the back wall, and a g…
…reat many of the people in it were between twenty-five and fifty and had once been eight years old in her library.
I spoke for nine minutes. I had timed it at home, with R. holding the stopwatch from his tackle box. She told me to keep it under ten.
What I said, in outline, so that I have it. That she was a librari…
May 2
After Lorraine's funeral I made Ray sit down, and we wrote this out.
We own two plots at Sunset Ridge Memorial Park, Madison: Section 14, Lot 212, spaces 3 and 4. Bought in 1999 and paid in full ($2,200 for the pair, then). The deed is in the safe deposit box. The opening and closing and the stone are NOT paid for.
Ray: cremation, ashes buried in space 3, "and nobody is to give a spee…
May 2
I made R. sit down at the kitchen table this afternoon, and we wrote out what e…
…ach of us wants done when the time comes, and where, and by whom. It was Lorraine's funeral that did it. It took an hour and a half. He was more definite than I expected, and quicker. A copy goes to Pastor Kristin.
Afterward R. went out and mowed.
May 4
Memorial in Lorraine's name
Jun 11
The telephone was ringing, and it was Lorraine, I could see the name. I had one…
…page left of a novel and I thought, I'll finish, then I'll have something to tell her. I read the page. It was a long page. When I picked up the telephone there was no call, and no name in it, and no place where the name had been.
Aug 20
Forty-six years. Ephraim, room 6, two nights. R. walked the whole shore trail o…
…n the new knee and timed himself.
I read "Tom Lake" on the porch swing in an afternoon, in cherry country, with a slice of pie. I would have telephoned Lorraine before I had finished the last page.
I keep both starters going. R. has labeled the jars: S, and S Sr.
Dr. Raghavan has taken me off the bone pill after f…
Sep 24
The book club has a new member as of this month, Margie Fitzsimmons. She sat do…
…wn in Lorraine's chair at Ruth's, looked round, and said, "I think I've taken somebody's place." Helen said yes, and that she was welcome to it.
Eleven new windows at the cabin as of Friday, every one but the kitchen's. The old ones were 1958, single glass with a storm, and rattled in a west wind. These do not rattl…
Nov 4
Lutefisk dinner, three seatings. I rolled for five hours beside Kirsten, whose…
…last name I have never learned and now cannot ask.
Lorraine bought two tickets every year, for the 12:30 seating, and gave her fish to Hal. I looked for her at half past twelve.
R. riced ninety pounds of potatoes last night with Harlan Nygaard.
Dec 5
Hawkstone Readers, 2023. Eight of us from April to September, nine before and a…
…fter.
Jan. 3 - "Demon Copperhead" - Marlene's
Feb. 7 - "Foster" - Connie's (Lorraine's last meeting)
March 7 - "Trust" - Ellie's
April 4 - "The Marriage Portrait" - Nan's
May 2 - "84, Charing Cross Road" - mine. Lorraine's favourite, ten days after she died.
June 6 - "Hello Beautiful" - Dee's
August 1 - "I Have Some…
Dec 28
Christmas in Portland, six days. Rain on every one of them. Theo will be six ne…
…xt month and has a loose tooth. June is two and a half and says "No thank you" to everything, including the things she wants.
Samir's parents had us all on Christmas Eve. Nabil and R. went off into a corner and talked about culverts for an hour and a quarter. Leila sent me home with a tin.
This was the first Christ…
Linked records are confirmed graph links; the arrow and name are the link the app receives. A mention is only a text match on the name and is never treated as a link.
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Facts
| First name | Lorraine |
|---|---|
| Last name | Pfeiffer |
| Date of birth | 1954-01-26 |
| Gender | Female |
| Comments | Died April 22, 2023. I am keeping her number. Her daughter is Annette. |
Phones
- number: '6085550114' variant: Mobile
People
Peg OstranderLorraine Pfeiffer is friend of Peg Ostrander
Appears with
People linked to the same records.
Ray · 3 records Patricia Lund · 2 records Dr. Raghavan · 2 records Nancy Haugen · 1 record Kurt Haugen · 1 record Stacy Haugen · 1 record Kristin Bakkum · 1 record Peter Haugen · 1 record Amy Wirtz · 1 record Matt · 1 record Barb Kuehl · 1 record Glenn Tollefson · 1 recordQuestions
11
Questions whose supporting records include Lorraine or a record linked to them.
q004 What is Annette's telephone number? Lorraine's daughter. q006 How many of the people in my address book have died? q025 How did I feel about retiring? Going by what I wrote at the time. q028 Walk me through Ray's heart since the stent, year by year. Has it held? q033 Where did my sourdough starter come from, and why is it called Sigrid? q036 Make me a list of every book I have written about in my journal. q038 Did I write down any dreams about Lorraine? q039 What did the doctor say about Ray's heart? q040 What was the book I read to Mom at the end? q041 What were the last words Lorraine said to me? q046 Did I ever go to that grief group after Lorraine died?