Sunday, May 1
It was a somewhat typical Sunday (although, we are learning to redefine “typical” where it relates to our daily lives). We began the day by visiting Mother at Wood Memorial Nursing Home and then driving out to Yantis for Sunday School and church.
We met with our friends Gene and Carolyn for lunch and then returned to the house in Mineola to rest a bit and do some of the “first of the month” chores…giving the puppies their monthly medications and changing the filter in the heating/cooling system.
Later, we went back to see Mother for a few minutes and then drove back to Yantis for choir practice and the evening service.
Monday, May 2
When I woke up this morning and came into the living room, I found Spike and Bonita “spooning” in Spike’s bed. Both puppies miss their mama, and have refused to sleep in her room since the first night she was gone in March. Instead, they have made their individual spaces in the living room. Bonita can be a real witch to Spike a great deal of the time, but they do have their tender moments.
While Barbara paid bills and did the banking, I spent much time on the telephone calling ETMC officials about Mother’s lost glasses and waiting for return calls. Since it was pretty important to us to get the glasses situation cleared up, we didn’t want to get too far away from a phone.
This evening we went to the nursing home to be with Mother during her dinner hour. The evening meal has never been a big deal with Mother (well, at least not since she got three boys out of the house many years ago), so she is pretty much satisfied with whatever they bring her.
Tuesday, May 3
I got up early this morning to attend prayer meeting at Yantis. Meanwhile, Barbara stayed at home and worked on gathering and editing pictures for journal entries that we had in progress…she’s really good at the multi-tasking stuff.
Business today included calling Eye Associates in Tyler to have them fax Mother’s latest prescription to the Walmart eye center in Mineola and working with the staff at Wood Memorial to make sure that Mother would have transportation to a scheduled appointment with Dr. Beck in Tyler tomorrow.
Barbara took a break around noon to join our friend Heidi for lunch and some shop-looking while I stayed around the house to do some much-needed yard work.
Wednesday, May 4
We spent the morning working around the house. Around 10:00, I rode the motorcycle over to Wood Memorial to make sure they got Mother loaded in the bus and on the way to Tyler for her appointment. I followed on the cycle and then stayed with Mother while we waited for Dr. Beck to get around to seeing her. When we finally got into the office, we found that Mother’s broken foot had healed nicely and she wouldn’t have to wear the special boot any longer. She was really glad of that!
With the excitement of the day over, we spent the evening in separate corners of the house. Barbara worked on journal entries while I tackled the desk in Mother’s room and tried to make sense of the piles of receipts and important papers that I had been stacking.
Thursday, May 5
Cinco de Mayo found us in Mother’s room, cleaning out her big walk-in closet and trying to make sense and order of everything in it. Because Mother was a child of the depression, she has never been able to throw anything away, so our foray into the closet was a real history lesson for both of us. At the end of the day, everything was either organized on shelves and racks in the closet, or in boxes set aside for storage.
Friday, May 6
This morning I went out to Our Little Lot to visit with Chris Rowan of CD’s Cabins and Covers about a project that we wanted him to do. The cover that he put over Big V last year was very nice, but we decided we wanted to add on a deck and storeroom, and I had to give Chris an idea of what we wanted so he could design and price it for us.
Barbara stayed in town to visit Mother this morning and then return to the house to cook, pay bills, and handle regular household chores (like keeping up with Spike and Bonita).
When I got back to town, I worked around the house for a bit and then went to see Mother before returning to the house where we spent a quiet evening.
Saturday, May 7
Barbara stayed in Mineola today to keep the home fires burning, while I rode the cycle to Marshall to take part in my first mission with the East Texas Patriot Guard Riders, a funeral service for U.S. Army veteran of the Viet Nam War.
The trip back to Mineola was uneventful and I arrived around 4:00, with time to visit Mother for a few minutes before heading for home for the evening.
Sunday, May 8
Happy Mother’s Day to mothers everywhere!!!
This was about as normal as Sunday as we are likely to have…visited Mother and then drove to Yantis for Sunday school and church. We then returned to the nursing home with a take-out dinner to share with Mother and TJ in the dining room. Ladd and Madelyn dropped by for a few minutes and we all had a nice little visit.
Monday, May 9
We got up this morning, had a little breakfast, took care of the puppies, and then headed out to Our Little Lot for another meeting with Chris to finalize the plans for the next stage of construction. By the time we were finished, we agreed that we’d pour a 10’ X 35’ slab directly adjacent to the slab that we already have, cover it with steel, and have an enclosed 10’ X 14 ‘ enclosed storage room on the back of the slab.
As soon as Chris left, we went to the clubhouse for the annual Property Owners Association meeting. After last year’s meeting, when I was elected to the board of directors, I knew we would be in for some fireworks. Sure enough, we weren’t disappointed. When Jack Roe, president of Holiday Villages of Lake Fork announced that I would chair a committee to oversee the transition of Lake Fork HV from corporate management to local management, the shouting started. You had to be there to get the full benefit of the brouhaha, but the main complaint against me being on the board is that Barbara and I don’t live on property fulltime. We explained our situation (for about the hundredth time), but it didn’t do much good among those whose minds were already made up.
There were some rather testy exchanges among some of the folks when the meeting was over, but we also had some nice comments and promises of cooperation before we finally had to leave and return to Mineola to check on Mother and review all that had been done today.
Tuesday, May 10
I went to prayer meeting at the church early this morning and then returned to the house, where Barbara and I spent the biggest part of the day cleaning house, doing laundry, paying bills, and working in the yard. Spring is in full bloom, and the front and back yards require mowing twice a week.
Barbara did some shopping and found a really nice little photo album that we loaded with pictures of kids and grandkids so Mother would have pictures to look at and show off to visitors at the nursing home.
Mother had a special visitor this morning. Frida, a missionary to Colombia, once lived with Mother in El Paso while she was studying there. Frida calls Mother, “Mama Edith,” and has kept up with her over the years. Frida is on furlough now and living in Dallas until she returns to the mission field in another month or so.
Mother seems to be settling in well at Wood Memorial. Our goal is that after a month of intensive rehab, we will be able to bring her home. Her room at the house is reorganized so that she will need to take only 20 steps to get from her bed to the bathroom or her lift chair, where she will be able to watch her favorite TV programs in comfort. Our mantra is, “20 steps, 20 steps, 20 steps.”
I went back to Yantis tonight to meet with the newly-elected search committee for a fulltime youth pastor. Our youth group is growing, and although we have excellent volunteer workers, the church voted to search for a fulltime person to head the youth programs.
On the way to Yantis, I stopped at Our Little Lot to see if any work had been accomplished. The concrete crew had been there sometime during the day and had begun moving dirt to level out the area for the new pad. It wasn’t very pretty, but it was evidence that the project is now underway!
Today was fairly quiet…made a trip to see Mother this morning to see how she was doing with physical therapy.
We went to the optometrist this afternoon…our first visit to one of those doctors in nearly five years. Our prescriptions had definitely changed since retirement, so we bit the bullet and went to the optical shop at Walmart. Barbara found a set of frames she really liked, but I couldn’t find anything there that would handle my trifocals. Around 4:30, we drove out toward Holiday Villages to an optician’s office where I found exactly what I needed. Now, we just both wait until our new eyes arrive.
Jaycie called this evening to say that while she and a friend were out at the Little League park in Lubbock, they found a memorial brick that someone had placed in memory of Jimmy Clint and his service to youth and the southwest Little League. Jaycie sent us a picture that she was able to take with her cell phone camera.
Today was relatively calm, which was greatly appreciated. We made a couple of trips to see Mother and make sure she was continuing to get settled in to her temporary digs at Wood Memorial Nursing Home. Mother isn’t crazy about the physical therapy, but we keep reminding her that it is necessary if she is to be able to walk again, a prerequisite for returning to her house so we can eventually care for her there.
We recently received a flyer from Holiday Villages announcing their latest appreciation gift, a deluxe smoker. We’ve never attempted using a smoker, but figured, “what the heck,” and decided to drive out to the park to claim one of the gifts.
Our first stop was at Our Little Lot to see what, if any effect last night’s rains had on our property. After viewing the dirt that had been placed next to the slap, we just christened it, “Our Little Mud Pit.” So much for being underway with the project, as it will take at least a couple more days of sunshine and warm weather before the crew can get back to work.
Today was the opening of the May Days celebration at the civic center park. We haven’t done much fun stuff since we returned from our Virginia trip, so we drove down to the park and walked around to see what was there. Several booths were set up, but we didn’t see anything that we couldn’t live without. The carnival rides hadn’t been set up yet, so it was pretty quiet. We had hoped to at least find something good to eat for supper, but nothing hit our fancy, so we made our way back out of the park and returned home to find something to eat.
Friday, May 13
We got around a little later than usual this morning, went to the nursing home to see how Mother was doing, and then drove out to Our Little Lot to see what, if any, progress was being made on our new construction. With no sign of anything happening there, we stayed around while we made calls to Chris to get an indication of when work would start. We also spent some time moving things around on the existing pad so there would be nothing in the way when the workers arrived to start the dirt work prior to pouring the concrete.
When we returned home, we had a light lunch and then settled in for our afternoon nap, and that’s when Friday the 13th kicked in with a vengeance.
At two o’clock, we received a phone call from the nurse’s station at Wood Memorial. The head nurse reported that she had checked on Mother and found her running a fever and unresponsive to any stimuli. She wanted to know if they should transport Mother to ETMC in Tyler. I said that they should do that, and Barbara and I immediately got ready for another trip…first to the nursing home to get more details, and then to Tyler.
When we got to Wood Memorial, the nurse told us that Mother was just not responding to anything, but that she felt she needed to be admitted through the emergency room as soon as possible. Arrangements were made, Mother was put on a gurney and loaded into the ambulance, and we began the trip.
When we arrived at ETMC, Mother was immediately assigned to an examining room (a great improvement over the last visit, when she had to stay in the waiting room for nearly three hours), and the nurses started checking vital signs and drawing blood for tests. Pretty soon, they inserted a catheter and started drawing off some of the nastiest fluid we’ve ever seen.
It turned out that Mother had a severe urinary tract infection, something that drives her over the edge, mentally. Not only that, the infection was on the verge of turning into sepsis. We were told that if the nurse at Wood Memorial hadn’t noticed the problem and reported it to us, Mother probably wouldn’t have survived the night. We weren’t pleased about Mother’s condition, but we were so very pleased with the caring and insightful nursing staff at Wood Memorial!
We spent the afternoon and evening in the emergency room with Mother until the doctor told us around 9:00 that they were still waiting on a room, and that we might as well return to Mineola for the night. We told Mother where she was and what was going on, and she responded, but we found later that she had absolutely no recollection of being in the emergency room.
Knowing that Mother was in good hands with the ETMC staff, we said our goodbyes and returned to the house in Mineola to take care of Spike and Bonita, and then crash for the night.
Saturday, May 14
Barbara and I went our separate ways (kind of) today. I had a Patriot Guard Rider function in Poynor, a funeral for a young navy veteran who had been killed in a motorcycle accident earlier in the week. I rode the cycle to Tyler and Barbara followed me in the car, but as I continued to Poynor, Barbara went to ETMC to spend the morning with Mother and then do some shopping before she returned to the house in Mineola.
I met up with the other PGR members at the high school in Poynor (the whole community turned out for the funeral, and the school was the only building in the town that was large enough to hold the crowd) and stood with the flag line, but begged off the ride to the cemetery so I could ride back to the hospital in Tyler to find out what was going on with Mother.
Mother was still unresponsive when I got there, but the nursing staff said she was becoming more stable and they were continuing to run tests. There was some indication that Mother had suffered a minor heart attack during all this mess, but the doctors were less concerned with that than they were about the extent of the urinary tract infection.
When I had finished sitting with Mother for a while and talking to the nursing staff, I once again climbed on the cycle and made the trip back to Mineola where we spent a quiet evening contemplating the events and possible ramifications of the past 30 hours.
“The original definition of courage is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.” – Brene’ Brown
From Mother’s house in Mineola,
Jim/Dad/Gramps and Barbara/Mom/Grams
