It's funny how life can go along the same for years, looking like it will go that direction for ever, then suddenly everything changes. That's what happened to us during 2005 and 2006.
It all began in September, 2005, when mom and dad got a letter inviting them to attend a fireside about senior missionaries. They took it as a message from the Lord that they should go another mission.
“Mom,” I tried to reason, “they sent that letter to everyone in our stake. It doesn't mean the Lord wants you and dad to go.”
It didn't matter what I said. They felt like they had received a call and were determined to follow if the Lord needed them. Within a few short months Dad was released from his calling as Stake Patriarch, they had their mission papers ready to be submitted, and they were prepared to leave. I was in shock.
Then, in February, mom got really sick. Dad took her to the hospital, but they couldn't find what was wrong so they sent her home.
“Why don't you bring mom up to Snowflake?” my brother-in-law, Alan, suggested. He had a medical practice there, and was able to make arrangements for mom to have tests run the next day, whereas down in the Valley it would be weeks before she could even see a doctor. The tests showed that she had a leakage in her heart and needed to have surgery, so Dad brought her home and we checked her into the hospital on March first.
Then we waited. We might have the best hospitals and doctors in the world in the Phoenix area, but when they are full of sick people, red tape, and endless regulations and procedures, things don't happen very quickly. Mom waited in the hospital sixteen days before she finally had quadruple by-pass surgery, then she was there for another five days recovering. I spent my time running back and forth from the hospital, trying to relieve dad so he could get some rest, but he was so worried about mom it didn't help. Obviously, they weren't going on a mission, after all, but it was a good thing dad had been released from being Stake Patriarch, anyway, since he couldn't have continued giving blessings with mom so sick.
I'm afraid we all got pretty fed up with mom's medical care during this time. It wasn't that the doctors were incompetent, although sometimes it felt like it when they wasted literally days because orders were not given in a timely manner and tests were not made when they were scheduled.. Perhaps there were too many specialists, all focused on their own job, but it sure would have been nice to have one main doctor in charge, coordinating everything. That's not how big hospitals work, though. So we waited, and waited, and waited. At one point some of the family got so frustrated they got upset with the nurses. That made mom feel terrible. She knew the nurses were doing the best they could under the circumstances. I didn't know how to help, but I did know how to make cinnamon rolls, so I took some to the nurses with a card thanking them for all their hard work. That made mom feel better.
After she was finally released from the hospital, dad came over and had a long talk with me.
“Gale,” he said, “Alan thinks we ought to move up to Snowflake so he can take care of mom himself.”
I looked at dad in surprise, but didn't say anything. Surely he wasn't serious? He'd built our double house in Gilbert fifteen years earlier with the intention of living there forever. The house was on two acres, and dad had often talked about the possibility of having other members of the family build next to us when times got hard. This was supposed to be where we lived forever! We couldn't really move!
“I'm scared of loosing mother,” dad continued with a pleading look in his eye. “If we move next to Linda and Alan, I think I'll be able to keep her with me for at least another ten years. I just can't loose her yet.”
And with that, my whole world shifted and changed directions, never to be the same again.
No comments:
Post a Comment