Our two loved ones we have been anxious about have passed away. I won’t write about it here, at least not yet.
I spend quite a bit of time at my desk which is surrounded by family photos. The serenity of this room is helpful. Our children have stayed close and that is also helpful.
Do you need some hope today? I know I do. Things are rough right now in the Ross and Sanchez families as two of our loved ones are in hospice care. Still, there are layers of experience in the sad times that I don’t want to forget. Life is never just one thing. Even within an hour there are experiences of all kinds to be found. When I have been in great physical pain, I have noticed that intense pain is not constant. I try to focus on the instants where the pain relents to see that even during painful times, there is still peace and mercy. The same is true with emotional pain.
I believe there is a universe of experiences, difficult and happy, behind every smile. So, here is a smile from my grieving face. I feel vulnerable doing this, but today I send hope in Christ to you with a smile.
Here is a list of kind things people did for us or gave to us this month when they knew we were stuck at home.
I feel that these things are just what our Savior would do. People are good.
It’s all there: the old family van, Mark is barefoot, Tim avoids the shot, and we are enjoying the warmth of St George in February as we did each President’s Day weekend. Good memories.
This is Rebecca’s house and it is also where Richard proposed. 🌹
Will she really be lost to us when she dies? I’m not talking about life after death, but my relationship with her. All my life, if I was lucky, I saw her once a year. Her influence wasn’t so weak as to only be there when we were together. It lived in memory, in letters I still keep, and in her uncanny ability to know when I needed something. Our understanding of one another grew as she revealed her generous nature. She pampered me in childhood, encouraged me as a teen, and mentored me as a young woman.
Wisdom in books and recipes and exchanged notes carried us through the turning point when I could be a help to her. She trusted me to write her story, to help her during an illness, and I sat with her as we drove away from her home for the last time.
Now she withdraws from us, settling into the idea of rest. My hope is that in death she’ll be restored to us more than she is now when I visit her, shrunken and white on her bed. I rouse her sometimes to say goodbye, but lately, I feel strength to let her rest, trusting that the quality of our relationship doesn’t depend upon a goodbye.
The words you speak become the house you live in. -Hafiz
This borrowed wisdom is what I have for today. ♥️
For many weeks, Paige and I have been helping my dad work on a big project for the family. He has typed a memoir of his childhood adventures in the rolling hills and rock formations near his home in Pittsburg, CA. Paige is illustrating the stories and I am editing and formatting the book. We are mailing a few stories each week to my siblings and their children, with the goal to print and bind a complete version by early April.
It reminds me of a project that I began in January 2020 to write memories of my childhood. I wrote about 15 or 20 pages before I set it aside. Living in close quarters during the past 10 months has made it a little harder to focus on writing. Plus, I struggle to define a work space. The desks are being used, the kitchen table must be cleared often, and I need extreme quiet. This project with my dad keeps some of my desire to write alive, and inspires me to pick up old projects and not find excuses to delay.
I am making a little progress on creating a portable workspace for myself. I need to be present a lot of the time, not hidden away in an office. So, my work world revolves around a book bag and lightweight storage containers more than a single desk.
Stephen King, in his book about writing, suggests a writer should not have a massive desk that dominates a room because writing is not the primary thing. Living with your family is more important. He thinks a smaller desk in a corner is best. 🙂
My sister Susan organized and compiled this masterpiece as a surprise to my parents. My dad is the reader but he didn’t know we were going to use it to make a pageant from 6 separate homes. 🤭
This December, my Advent theme is Hope. It’s my plan to share something each day leading up to Christmas. On this day, I include some words of women in my family about enduring difficult times. Knowing these stories and others from my family history gives me strength and hope to endure my own difficulties. I thank my Heavenly Father for these stories of hope.
“…We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things…”
The Articles of Faith 1:13
My Great-grandmother Della Griggs Stewart, who lived during the flu epidemic of 1918:
“The influenza epidemic broke out and [my husband] Del was very ill for two weeks. This was a terrible time for everyone. The high school was closed and turned into a hospital, cots were sent in and everyone available was called in to nurse the sick. I helped what I could, nursing some and helped take care of children whose parents had died or who were very ill. We had to wear masks; no one could come into town or leave. Our friends and neighbors were dying two and three per day. Our families were spared.”
My Great-great-great grandmother Fanny Fry, who traveled without family as a sixteen-year-old across the plains, pulling a handcart in 1859:
“At the Elk Horn River, my feet were so swollen I could not wear my shoes. Then when the swelling went out, my feet were so sore from the alkali that I never had on a pair of shoes after that for the entire journey…
“We had to pull up quite a long hill, and part of it was steep. In climbing we got behind one of the teams for the oxen to help us, for it was all we could do to keep it moving. Captain Rowley came up and called us lazy, and I did not consider we were at all.
“While pulling this heavy load, I looked and acted strange. The first thing my friend Emmie knew I had fallen under the cart, and before they could stop it, the cart had passed over me, and I lay at the back of it on the ground. When my companions got to me, I seemed perfectly dead. Emmie could not find any pulse at all, and there was not a soul around. They were, she thought, all ahead, so she stood thinking what to do when Captain Rowley came up to us. ‘What have you got there, Emmie?’ he said. ‘Oh my, Fanny is dead,’ she said. It frightened him, so he got off his horse and examined me closely but could not find any life at all. He asked Emmie to stay with me and he would go and stop the company and send a cart back for me, which he did.
“When I came to myself, my grave was dug two feet deep, and I was in a tent. The sisters had sewed me up to the waist in my blanket, ready for burial. I opened my eyes and looked at them.
“I was weak for some time after. I did not fully recover during the rest of the journey. Through it all I found I had a great many friends in the company.”
My mother, who had a brother wounded in the Vietnam War when she was a teen in 1968:
“I was 14 years old and Doug was 11. We were home alone because Mom and Dad were out on a Sunday drive, and two Marines knocked on our front door. Finding out that our parents weren’t home, one asked if they could wait in our living room. I stayed in the back TV room with Doug and was dying inside and praying so hard for Mom and Dad to get home. They did arrive a little later (seemed like two years) and when they pulled into the driveway, they saw the Marine Corps car and wouldn’t get out! Finally, I heard them come in the front door and from the hallway I heard, “He’s not dead!” That’s when I lost it and ran to the back room again. We learned that my much-idolized-by-me big brother was barely hanging on to life. I couldn’t speak. Well, that’s when the daily telegrams started that always ended: ‘RECOVERY QUESTIONABLE’. Weeks later, when my mom was at least 10 pounds lighter, the ‘RECOVERY EXPECTED’ telegram came. Elder Bruce R. McConkie, an Apostle in the LDS Church had been in Vietnam at that time and had given David a Priesthood blessing. Elder McConkie told Grandpa Que later that David’s healing was a gift from God and a miracle.
“David recovered and honorably served for twenty-nine years in the Marine Corps.”