No, I did not publish a "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" post this year, or anything for a long time, although I now belatedly offer warm sentiments to my few readers. My excuse is that I am being worn down. Life keeps throwing stress in the form of worry and the occasional major loss at us and is winning that fight.
The economy still sucks, job security is still low, and the government's flailing to keep the ruling party in power continues to neither help us nor secure the future. These factors have not changed for most of five years now and are great sources of stress.
For our family, in addition to the above, we lost a close member. For over 19 years Juanita Stewart, Sharon's mom, lived with us. Her older daughter had died when a sudden rainstorm turned the water run-off channel of a road she was crossing into to torrent of rushing water and she tried to drive across it and was washed away by a sudden high wall of water, and so we invited her to stay with us. From the start, she did much to fit in. She babysat the kids, taught them how to cook, offered advice, helped with the bills, and was, the way I recall, a generally nice though sad lady who would ramble on in getting to a point but who loved us all. Grandma of the House (GotH) as I called her could not open up and be the happy cuddly kind of Grandma, and she occasionally would tell the kids how to do things in the kitchen when they thought they were beyond needing help, which led to some unkind grumpiness at times. She also had severe osteoporosis, which in watching her deal with it over the last few years had me admiring her ability to live with that debilitating condition and also wondering when the medical community is going to get on with developing some real cures for it. She liked birds, and had several bird identification books, and flowers, and the small critters that often wandered in our yard. For years she went for walks, or shopping and visits to the doctors who over time became more and more her reason for going out, and kept active with her slow, short steps. As Sharon said, her Mom was one of her best friends, and they spent a lot of time together talking, or just watching TV. Juanita sometimes got frustrated, or was in pain, which meant that the person or people near her would need to be sympathetic and helpful. Sometimes those with a bit less wisdom would get upset at her; to them I say "lets see how you are doing when you hit your 70s and 80s".
I mentioned in a previous post about all the change that she saw. She also had a difficult life beyond the early years where her family got through the Great Depression. She was one of several kids (7 I think) and her favorite Sister was killed in an automobile accident when in her late teens. I believe that made her somewhat nonreligious, despite her father being a preacher. It also probably made her somewhat bitter overall, keeping her from becoming close to others over the years. Very sad, but at heart she was still a good and kind person, though some probably did not see that. Her parents, especially her father, were apparently difficult people, very strict and not easy to be close to. She worked for a while as a telephone operator, which she talked about once in a way that showed pride and happiness in being successful in that. At some point she married her only husband, Merrill (spelling may be wrong) also known as "Red" who was an Air Force enlisted maintenance troop. He worked on the U-2s, one of the wonders of aviation during the late 1950s and 1960s. She went with him to at least two exotic locations: Algeria and Japan. Recall that this was not long after World War II, so Japan at that time was still smarting from being defeated, and was desperately trying to dig out from the severe loses they had taken. Juanita's time in those countries was, I gather, stressful since she had never been outside the US and here she was going into fundamentally different cultures. But she got through these experiences as she did so many others. Their marriage produced two children, Sharon and her older sister Margie. Margie had some serious mental health issues, though whenever I met her she was nice. Eventually the marriage broke up, and Juanita stayed in Mountain Home ID while Merrill moved on.
When I met her in Mt Goat (the very unofficial Air Force nickname for Mt Home, ID) she had been the chief cook at the Mt Home city hospital for many years. She maintained her house, with Sharon, and I recall the first time Sharon took me over to meet her she was mowing the lawn. We had a pleasant meeting and I was impressed that she did so much despite already showing signs of having osteoporosis. Over time I became more impressed with all she did, and that respect lasted. One major cause for respect was her ability to quit smoking. Apparently she had smoked for many years, but at some point she decided to quit and did so. A strong willed woman, indeed. After Sharon and I married and moved to Albuquerque we exchanged visits occasionally, with Juanita driving down in an old small red car and always being nice. She eventually retired, then moved in with Margie in Tucson, where she kept busy working at Burger King until Margie's accident.
So, getting back to the near past. Over the years her health had started to decline. The wasting of her bones led to some bone breaks and hospital stays. But in October (if memory serves) she started having problems breathing and with some chest issues, and she was diagnosed with COPD and a failing heart. From there on, Sharon became her primary care giver, and was wonderful for her Mom. For two weeks Juanita was in the hospital, and foolishly I thought that modern medicine would be able to cure her. They assigned home care nurses and physical therapists, an oxygen generator, and medicines when she came home. This seemed at first to help, with GotH even going out one last time to shop, though Sharon said she did not do well on that trip. I noticed that sometimes she seemed to make some progress, but more often there was some decline. And so it was. The day her home care benefits ran out her nurse told Sharon that Juanita would not be getting better, that her symptoms were bad enough to justify hospice. She did not expect Juanita would die for over six months, but that she would not last much longer than that. The next day she had a heart attack in the morning after she and Sharon had had their morning chat, apparently as Sharon was driving to work, and died instantly.
I miss her.
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