In Mom's Words

About four years ago, we come home from the hospital starting a new life, new way of doing things because of George's stroke. He had new knees from knee replacement. The stroke limited his memory and ability to make decisions and he was unable to read. He sees out of half of his eye and the other half is totally black, things are turned around backward and upside down for him. He did learn how to read the alphabet, but was unable to put letters together and read whole words. Reading was one of his joys--he read a lot of books and now he was unable to read. He watched a lot of TV, in between sleeping.

Days were long, he was happy and made jokes as usual. He never lost his sense of humor. In the hospital there was a therapist from the Philippines. He spoke Filipino and George spoke Maori and they laughed and had a great time. Some of the nurses did not have a sense of humor--they'd just look at them and wonder what was going on. I enjoyed listening to them.

In March 1991, on a Friday George retired and Monday morning, we left to go to the mission home in Provo, Utah. We were preparing to serve a mission in Rapid City, South Dakota. We lived in Eagle Butte the entire time we were there. What an experience! We enjoyed it. We had experiences that we'd never have anywhere else. George was the Branch President and I was just there on his arm. He was instructed to grow a garden, which he did. It was a beautiful garden. Vegetables grew very well and people drove by slowly to see that garden. One day George was out working the garden and he wanted something out of the tool shed and so he just stuck the shovel down in the dirt. The handle was sticking up, he walked back to the tool shed, got what he wanted, went back to get his shovel--no shovel. He looked and looked but couldn't find a shovel. He looked around, couldn't see a person anywhere, but the shovel was sure gone. Never did find it.

In the fall when the vegetables were ready, at the end of Sacrament meeting he announced that anyone who wanted vegetables could come and pick some and take them home. So everybody went to the garden, got their veggies and were they ever happy!

There was a community center where we would go and have lunch quite often. The ladies would make different kinds of crafts to sell. They had a serger they'd bought but weren't using. The head gal wanted me to take the serger home and learn how to use it, then come back and show them how to use it. At the time, they were making big rabbits and clothes for the rabbits. I made some and took back and showed them what I made and showed them how I'd done it. They just looked at me like "who do you think you are?" Anyway, I did what I was asked to do. I made other things for them and they were happy with that. I made big rabbits, little rabbits and in between rabbits.