One Year.........

One year ago from right now......I had no idea how my world would be turned upside down and falling apart before the day was done and my life would be forever altered. The day was fairly unremarkable and the same as usual. Only in the early afternoon did I even find out that anything had been wrong with Mom and that she'd been in the ER. I made a quick trip to Wal-Mart to pick up some groceries for dinner and was rushing back to get dinner taken care of before we'd take off for Alex's Cub Scout meeting when I got the most horrible phone call of my life. Mandy called me in absolute hysterics and I couldn't understand a thing she was saying. I actually thought she was laughing really hard at first. Then when she couldn't stop it started sinking in that something was terribly wrong. She finally calmed just enough that I could understand her saying that she'd been giving Mom CPR and that she was now leaving in an ambulance not breathing and with no pulse. :( By that time, I was in hysterics of my own. I honestly don't know how I made it the rest of the way home.....I must have been on auto pilot.
One year later......not a lot has changed about my every day life. We pretty much do the same things we do every day that we did before. The pain of loss is easier to deal with though I still think about and miss Mom every single day. I can't believe it's been a whole year.
I love you and miss you so much, Mom.

Last phone call.......

One year ago today was the last time I talked to Mom. Having lived far away for so long, our daily....sometimes multiple daily....phone calls were a huge part of our relationship. I called her about everything and nothing. Sometimes really just needed to hear her voice. And I knew it so well. She often marveled at how I could tell so many things about her, just by hearing her voice. Yes, I knew it so well. When she was sick, I told her several times that she was forbidden to go anywhere because I didn't have anyone to talk to like her and certainly no one would put up with all my calls like her. lol Now a year later.....what I would give, just to hear it one more time. *TEARS*

A friend shared this video & song with me today. I had never heard it before, but it is so appropriate for how I feel every day missing talking to my Mom, but especially today. If you play it, you'll want to pause or stop my other music first.
It's called "Address in the Stars."

Been a while...........

My last real blog was March 9th. Little did I know that 2 days later, our world would be turned upside down once more. Early in the morning on March 11, 2009 I had barely woken up and got out of bed, ready to get the day moving and the phone rang. It was Erik, who tearfully told me that his Dad had passed away. :(
I knew in my heart that we didn't have much longer with him, but this was unexpected. He was really weak when we'd last seen him in January, just didn't look or act well at all. February 12 he called us and told us he had a form of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma called Mycosis Fungoides. Which pretty much means that it presented itself first in his skin. In January, he had thought it was a really bad case of flared up eczema. Obviously, it wasn't. He was facing a really intensive round of chemo and radiation treatments. Given his massive other health issues and his already weakened condition, I never expected that he would make it through the treatments. Though Mom had other health problems prior to the cancer, her overall condition was soooooooooo much better than his and I saw what her treatments took out of her.....and hers wasn't even close to being as intensive as his would have been. I just knew the treatments alone would have done him in, if it weren't the cancer. Turns out, it never even came to that. His poor heart gave out first. :( He had a really bad heart. Had a pacemaker for like 20 years.....so it wasn't like that was a huge surprise either. I guess the added stress of knowing what was in store for him was maybe just too much. The biggest surprise for us was that we had talked to him at around 7pm the day before. Called to sing him Happy Birthday for his 61st birthday. He sounded so happy, was in great spirits. He excitedly told Erik of all the running around town he did that day and in talking to his friends after, it was apparently the best he'd been seen by them in about 6 months. So, the emergency room calling Erik early the next morning and telling him that he was gone came very unexpectedly at that moment.
This is a moment we had dreaded for a long time. Not only because of losing his Dad and the boys' "Papa Doc" they adored so much, but because Erik is his only child and everything was left to us to take care of. Being 600 miles away when this stuff happens, is not an easy thing. Had been through it only 7 months before when we lost Mom....only we weren't quite so on our own then.
We took care of first things first, which was him obviously. We had his memorial service that Saturday, the 14th, in Cedar City, UT and his interment the following Monday, the 16th, in Sandy, UT. Everything turned out really nice, especially the military honors. That was very beautiful and emotional too.
It has been 5 months today since we lost him. We miss him very much. Our sadness aside, we are glad that he is no longer suffering and free from the sick body that held his free spirit captive for so long. I am thankful that Heavenly Father showed him mercy and that he didn't have to endure the cancer treatments which would have been so horrible for him. Rest in Peace, Papa Doc.

This picture was from the last time we saw him, in January. I was just goofing around with my new phone when I snapped this picture. Had I known it would be the last time, I'd have taken so many more. *sigh*

Giving a shout out to my Dad!

Haven't blogged in a while. So much has happened to tell......guess I've lost that bloggin' feelin.' My Dad keeps asking when I'm going to start blogging again....so thought I'd give him a shout out....."HI DAD!!!!" lol Maybe I'll sit down and write a blog tomorrow. It's going to be a long one for sure.....and I'm just too tired right now.