One Day at a Time

Our house did not sell right away. It was 2006, we lived in Arizona, and we were on the downhill slide into the housing recession. When dad first put the house on the market it appraised for just under a million dollars. Land, all by itself in Gilbert, was going for $400,000 an acre, and we were on two acres. But suddenly, no one was buying.

Dad went ahead with his plans to move mother up to Snowflake anyway. They bought a piece of land right across the street from my sister, Linda. She and Alan had built their house five years earlier, when Alan began practicing medicine in Snowflake. Dad stayed busy all summer drawing house plans and driving mom back and forth to see Alan.

At the same time, Moe's mother deteriorated more and more. Since her stroke she had been unable to walk or take care of herself, and gradually she stopped knowing what was going on, spoke very little, and ate only when she was fed.

Moe's father wore himself out taking care of her, and ended up in the hospital himself. Moe's sister came down from Utah to take care of her mother, but she was afraid to be alone with her at their house, so they moved in with us.

Moe spent Father's Day at the hospital with his dad. Grandpa was having a hard time being in the hospital, he didn't understand why or where he was, and the only thing that seemed to calm him down was having Moe with him. The doctor ordered a heavy sedative to help calm grandpa down, so Moe left to get something to eat and take a shower. He got back to discover grandpa tied hand and foot to the bed, still struggling.

Eventually the medicine finally began to work, so Moe came home for a few hours the next day to sleep.

“You won't believe it,” he told me and his sister as he walked in the door. “Dad actually broke the hospital bed trying to get loose last night. Then he told me that he dreamed about being captured by Indians, staked out over an ant hill, with his hands and feet tied to trees.”

We laughed, but I sure felt bad for Grandpa. After he got out of the hospital, grandpa wasn't able to take care of grandma by himself anymore. Thank goodness Moe's sister was able to move in permanently with them, working from home. A few weeks later, though, she needed to go to California for work, so both Grandma and Grandpa came to live with us for a week. This time we moved them into our big adjoining living room. Mom and Dad were up in Snowflake again, and it was easier to fit a hospital bed, wheel chairs, and the other stuff they needed in there. I got pretty good at changing diapers and feeding people, but I wrote in my journal that my life had gone crazy. “Nothing is the same anymore,” I wrote,” but we just keep going on from day to day.”

That was one long, hot summer. The temperature reached 118 degrees in July. Thank goodness all our neighbors had swimming pools, and they graciously let the girls go swimming whenever they wanted. As August approached, I worried what to do about the girls school. If the house sold, we would have to move, and I hated making them change in the middle of the year, but with no idea when that would be, it seemed inevitable that they at least start at their regular school. So, in the middle of August Kami began 6^th grade and Krissi began 5^th. I wondered where we would be by the end of the school year, but for the moment, at least, we were just taking life one day at a time.