Mahaska Community Memorial Service

Andrea Tennison, Patient Care Coordinator for MHP Home Health and Hospice Services welcomes everyone to the evenings memorial service

Oskaloosa, Iowa – Friends and family joined together to remember their loved ones Wednesday evening at the MHP Hospice Serenity House.

Those with Mahaska Health Partnership, Mahaska Hospice Auxiliary, Garland-Van Arkel-Langkamp Funeral Chapel along with the Pastor of Rose Hill Community Church offered words of encouragement to those gathered.

Sharing the memories of life was the inspiration behind the song Pastor Del Bittner sang, which was written by him and titled ‘Memories and Landmarks’.

Bittner had lost his first wife fifteen years ago, and his second wife has now lived in a nursing home for the past 13 months. “So I share a lot of the anguish a lot of people do when you lose people. I really geared tonight to try and get them to look at the positive of memory instead of the negative side.”

Bittner shared some of how his song started by sharing his memories, going back to the last few years of his life in Taintor where his parents had a grocery store and his father was also a contractor.

After spending many years away living in Colorado, Bittner and his first wife were back for a visit, “I want to go up there and see if I left any tracks.”

Upon arriving back in Taintor, “Surprisingly I didn’t find any sign I’d ever been there. Those landmarks that trigger memories was really the root of what I started to write.”

Having the chorus for awhile, along with the melody that he wanted, “I just couldn’t come up with the message.”

“They called me to ask me to speak at this, and I was coming home from Arizona about three weeks ago driving and just thinking about this meeting tonight. All of a sudden, just the thoughts begin to roll through my mind, memories are landmarks as well, and they are the landmarks that guide us through our life.”

The closing included a tree planting and dedication on the Serenity House grounds.