Hi, Internet!
So the following is an excerpt from an weekly email we send our family on our lives. This email was a record of the week of my grandmother's death, funeral, and how she changed my life.
Hope you enjoy!
Hello, Everyone.
Whew... what a weekend.
Jeannine mentioned that my Grandma Minnie (my father's mother) passed away last week. So I'm going to take a little different direction than our other emails. I'd like to record the events of the weekend and recount a few stories in tribute to her. Be warned... it's going to be REALLY long.
So, for more stories on our cute kids, tune in next week... Don't worry. They're still the cutest kids in the world.
Just as some context of the story: Grandma's passing was in no way a surprise. While her health decline was unexpectedly quick, when I went to visit her last Friday (the 19th) she wasn't conscious, she hadn't eaten or drunk anything in almost 36 hours, and she was breathing about 40 times a minute (a regular person her age breathes 15-20 times a minute). So I knew it would be days, if not hours, before she would pass. I left her place at about 4:00 pm and I got a call from my mom a little more than an hour later telling me that she had died.
But man... it was a whirlwind of a week.
The viewing was on Friday evening and the funeral was Saturday. James thought was a really good idea to wake up at 2:30 in the morning Thursday night screaming his head off... something about having a fever of 102.7 makes a kid kinda grumpy...
Okay, one cute kid story. When I got up to get him, he was screaming, which is kind of uncharacteristic of him. He's more of a middle of the night whiner. But when I touched him, he was ON FIRE! I honestly thought his temperature was more like 105 and we'd have to take him to the ER. But after we turned on the lights, Jeannine and I helped calm him down. I must have checked his temperature at least 7 time to make sure it wasn't any higher... It went something like this...
time 1: 102.7
time 2: 102.7
time 3: 102.7
time 4: 102.7
time 5: 102.7
time 6: 102.7
this stupid thing MUST be broken. Let's try the rectal thermometer.
time 7: 101.8
Okay, I'll stop freaking out, thermometers...
After Dad and James stopped freaking out, he was really fun. I love the way he smiles and laughs at us when we all have the understanding that we're trying to be happy... which was hard to accomplish, given the hour. but we played around for a little while, drugged him with some Ibuprofen, and sang him to sleep.
Well, that was fun...
But morning came EARLY! we decided to delay our plans a bit, and take off after James's nap. Abby was really excited to leave because she would be able to see her cousins and swim in the hotel pool.
When we got to the hotel in Pocatello, we really only had time to check in and leave for the viewing. By this time, James was a wreck, and we decided to let him get some sleep at a normal hour. So Jeannine and James stayed behind, while Abby and I went to the viewing in Blackfoot, Idaho.
It was fun seeing family and talking to people who were important to my grandmother. Abby had fun running around with all of her kid cousins. She was actually a champion, for not having taken a nap. We stayed at the viewing until about 9 pm.
My family ordered in pizza to the hotel, so we had a pizza party at the pool area... at like 10pm. Abby loves pizza, but when Jeannine offered her another slice, she said... I just want to go to bed. So Jeannine went back, and got her ready for bed.
Can I pause in the email to mention how much my wife did for me this weekend? Anytime there was a sacrifice to be made, it was her. She stayed behind from the viewing, because James was a wreck... who consequently, was a wreck at the restaurant they went to for dinner, literally throwing chicken nuggets around the place. She got up with James in the hotel when he would cry, because she knew the next day would be emotionally draining for me. Even Sunday night, when my family was having the last dinner together, Abby had a fever, so she stayed behind to be with her. She even had to prepare a Young Women's lesson she had to teach the next day. She somehow did so, without taking time away from the festivities of the weekend.
She is the best woman on the planet... that is all.
Saturday started early. Abby asked when we were going swimming... so we took a 30 minute dip in the pool at 6:45. We spent most of the time in the "hot" tub (which was more like a lukewarm tub). James loved jumping in the big pool (which was unheated) and then running into the lukewarm tub. He also loves dunking his head under water. We had a good time.
After we showered and ate breakfast, we made back to Blackfoot where we attended the family prayer and funeral. My siblings and I sang a musical number - a mashup of Michael McClean's Together Forever Someday and Families Can Be Together Forever. We had sung the arrangement before, but with not much practice. I listened to a recording of it. My sisters are amazing... but it wasn't my best performance, so I'll refrain from attaching to this email.
The funeral and graveside services were nice. I'll talk about some of the fun stories that were told in a little later on in the email.
After the funeral, we went to the Juniper Hills Country Club for a luncheon. Our kids were SUPER tired by the time we got there. Abby barely made it to the country club, but James was OUT. It's really the first time I've taken him out of his carseat and carried him somewhere and he stayed asleep... FOR LIKE 30 MINUTES! By the time he woke up, my shoulder was drenched with a sweat/drool combo. But it was fun to snuggle with him for so long.
After the luncheon, we drove home... and life has gone on pretty normally... but there have been times where I remember that Grandma Minnie is gone and how much I'll miss her. Like today, I was reviewing the schedule for the week. And I, out of habit, said, "Maybe I'll go visit Grandma on Friday on my way to school..." Then it hit me... "Nope, I won't." And that made me sad.
Abby chimed in right after I said that by saying in a cutely innocent, but totally tactless way, "Why would you go see your grandma...? She's DEAD!" It was pretty funny.
It's true. Grandma is gone... but my life has been so blessed in so many ways that I hadn't really thought about until this weekend.
She was SUCH a hard worker. Her father passed away when she was six years old. She grew up helping her mother and family sustain a small vegetable garden that she and her family lived on.
She taught my father, who in turn taught me and my family, to do more than your share, take less than you deserve, and to be humble.
She LOVED playing with children, especially Abby. Here is my favorite videos of all time. It is of her and Abby playing together. She was in extreme back pain here and moments after this video, she'd have to be taken to the hospital for relief, but you'd never know it. She'd do anything to make my daughter smile.
I remember her telling me a story in which she was in a meeting where the keynote speaker said a very racially intensive remark directed at Japanese-Americans. When my Dad and I asked her if she made a point to walk out of the meeting, she said that everyone was looking at her, and all she did was give a dignified nod, showing that she acknowledged people's concern, but stayed in the meeting to support her friend... the speaker who had made the comment.
Her homemade sour cream cookies were the stuff legends were made out of. and literally NO ONE knows how to make them. My oldest sister tried asked for the recipe, but she still hasn't gotten them right... we're all a little suspicious that she left something out on purpose so the legend died with her.
She was a disciplinarian, sometimes to a fault. But that is what blessed my life the most.
When my dad was a boy, he and his brother found his dad's cigarettes and started to smoke them. One day, they couldn't get them lit, for some reason, and they tried to hide them in my aunt's closet... (because burying them in the garbage, or anywhere else on their 100 acre farm wasn't a good enough hiding spot...?). Grandma found them, and when my grandpa said he'd never do such a stupid thing like that, she knew it was my dad and uncle. In the words of my father, he, "thought they had just cashed in their birth certificates."
She made the decision right then and there that she needed help in setting them on the right path. So she took them to Primary at the Mormon Church. She had noticed that the Church influenced other kids to sit still and listen, and if the Mormons couldn't set these two straight, then no one could.
A few months later, on April 1st, 1961, she and my dad were baptized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In Alma chapter 5, Alma is talking to the people and asks them if they have, "retained in remembrance the captivity of [their] fathers?" and if have "sufficiently retained in remembrance that [Christ] has delivered their souls from hell?" Next to that scripture, I have written the words:
My Father's Delivery Date: 4/1/1961
And even though neither fully understood or were committed to live up to the covenants they made at the time, that was the date my dad started his life as a member of the Church, which eventually led him to full conversion, full-time missionary service in Japan, sealing to my mother in the Idaho Falls temple, and five children and 13.5 grandchildren who are all still active members (or future members) of the Church. It has had a tremendous impact on my life.
So much so, that when my dad mistakenly asked Abby if she knew were Bachan (my mom's mother who passed away a year earlier) was, Abby had the knowledge to say, "She's with Grandma Minnie". Maybe people will accuse me of brainwashing my child... but I don't care. I love that the decision my grandmother made more than a half a century ago to send my dad to the Mormons, eventually gave my daughter the comfort to deal with losing someone she loved so much.
Even though not all experiences with my grandmother were positive, she was kind, loving, thoughtful, hard-working and hilarious.
Whew, if you're still with me, thank you for reading the memories of my beloved Grandma Minnie. Families are forever. Families are Eternal. And that's what we're striving for.
thanks for sharing your tender thoughts. it is nice to see people who love their families so much and how lives are affecting lives.
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