She was born in Cleveland, the daughter of the late Arthur D. Walden and Emma Remillard Walden.
She devoted a lifetime of love and service to her own eight children, to her husband, to her parents, to the elderly she kept in her home, to the recipients of her meals-on-wheels, to the patients at the hospital where she volunteered, and to her friends and her community and her country.
She was never more at home than when in her garden. She was a humble, bright, wise, kind and witty woman ... quick with a quip: “What’s your hurry? Here’s your hat.”
Two days before her death she smiled at her grandson, Mike Swinehart, and said: “I don’t think I’m going out for the team this year.”
She was preceded in death by her husband, Glenn W. Abel; son, Michael Glenn Abel; and a daughter, Theresa Abel.
Survivors include her sons: Dennis Abel of Cumming and Roger Abel of Buford, Ga.; daughters: Ginger Swinehart of Jonesborough, Patty Shirkey of Worthington Springs, Fla., Peggy Walker of Marietta, Ga., and Katherine Roberts of Sarasota Fla.; 16 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
A funeral mass will be celebrated in Latin on Friday, June 1, 2012, at 11 a.m. at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church, 900 Clingan Ridge Drive N.W., Cleveland, TN 37312.
Interment will follow in Hilcrest Memorial Gardens.
“Death is nothing at all
“I have only slipped away into the next room
“I am I and you are you
“Whatever we were to each other
“That we are still
“Call me by my old familiar name
“Speak to me in the easy way you always used
“Put no difference into your tone
“Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
“Laugh as we always laughed
“At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
“Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
“Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
“Let it be spoken without effort
“Without the ghost of a shadow in it
“Life means all that it ever meant
“It is the same as it ever was
“There is absolute unbroken continuity
“What is death but a negligible accident?
“Why should I be out of mind
“Because I am out of sight?
“I am waiting for you for an interval
“Somewhere very near
“Just around the corner
“All is well.
“Nothing is past; nothing is lost
“One brief moment and all will be as it was before
“How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!”
—Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral
Funeral arrangements by Ralph Buckner Funeral Home, 3000 Ralph Buckner Boulevard, Cleveland TN 37311 http://www.ralphbuckner.com
You are invited to sign the family guest book at www.ralphbuckner.com.
