Only Smiles - Remembering Judy

As you probably already know, my oldest sister, Judy, passed away on Tuesday, May 5. My nephew texted me the news just as I was boarding a plane to fly to Germany on a seven-day tour.

I had visited her three times over the previous four days. “Visit” is not quite an accurate word, as the only time she looked me in the face, with any sort of recognition, she exclaimed “Patti”, the name of our sister who had died in 1999.

Camping with Judy and Pat in 2013

So, we all knew she was dying and only had days left. She’d been in hospice for a few months, Alzheimer’s having worn out her body as well as her brain.

My immediate family has dwindled another notch. When our parents die, we say we are an orphan. When it’s our spouse, we are a widow or widower. What do we call ourselves when a sibling dies? Or worse, when a child dies? 

Me with Val, Judy, and my niece Paula, in 2024. How is it that only two of us are left? 

It’s been a rough thirteen months. It was in April of last year that we realized my brother’s mental capability had deteriorated to the point that he could no longer live alone. He’s been in assisted living since July 1, and who knows how much longer he has.

With Judy and Tom, in 2024. 

But that’s the life of the youngest child in the family, I guess. The life of a mother, a sister, a daughter. The life of someone who just wants everyone to be happy and at peace.

Okay, but . . . what else can I say? I’m doing okay. I really am. And on Wednesday I promise to start sharing stories and pictures of my trip to Germany. No more tears, only smiles.

This gem was from 1991, a Christmas present for Mom and Dad

Us girls with Mom at my cousin's wedding in 1981. Yikes!

Short and Sweet Today (just like me!)

I wanted to share a detailed post for you today, filling you in on everything that’s happened in my life over the last 13 months. But, for starters, I don’t know where to begin. And also, I just got home from a week-long tour in Germany, and as I write this Thursday night, the jet lag is really hitting.

So here’s just a single picture, a teaser of what you’ll see on my blog in the next few weeks.

This could be some place within forty miles of where I live. But it’s much farther away, in the picturesque German town of Blaubeuren.

Family Travels - Val's Story, Chap 6, Part 2

Many years later, when Val was a high school senior, she and I took my mom on a road trip to Virginia over Spring Break, to visit relatives and see Virginia Beach.

          The second night on the road, we ate dinner at the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Danville, then checked into a Super 8 motel. Hours after going to bed, Val started vomiting and couldn’t stop. By three am, my mom and I decided that enough was enough, and we dragged my poor daughter into the car to begin searching for the nearest ER.

          The night clerk at the motel tried to be helpful, but in the dark of the night, her directions made no sense. We just started driving, hoping to run across a big blue H sign. 

          The Danville Regional Medical Center is a nice, modern facility, and the ER doctor didn’t take long to diagnose food poisoning. We immediately blamed the Colonel. With IV fluids and Compazine running, Val was able to fall right asleep in her hospital bed. Grandma and Mom, on the other hand, dozed fitfully in our hard plastic chairs, our heads bobbing and jerking, until they released Val at seven in the morning.

          The poor kid never seemed to get any breaks on our vacations. Except for this time, when we got to my mom’s uncle’s house.  

          When we pulled the car into their driveway, Val wanted to stay in the car, sleeping off her ER visit. We left her there when we went in to see the relatives.

          A short time later, the woman who came in the afternoons to help them with dinner, housework, and getting them ready for bed arrived. When she found Val in the car, she scooped my daughter up and brought her inside.

          “I found dis little girl out in da car,” the woman announced in her Southern drawl. “She say she sick, and the back seat of a car ain’t no place if you sick. I goin’ put her in bed and git her some lemon tea.”

          Val dutifully followed her into the bedroom and crawled into bed. When it was time to leave for the evening, Val really didn’t want to go. She found Southern hospitality much to her liking. Finally, something my baby girl agreed with!

Val on Virgina Beach

Family Travels - Val's Story, Chap 6, Part 1

Over the years, we went on a few family vacations, but it seemed Val always ended up in one crisis or another.

          When she was much younger, we took a trip to South Dakota. We had a cassette tape of the Peanuts characters singing country-western classics. I had never been a fan of that genre of music, but after days in the car listening to it over and over, the songs actually grew on me. Nick and Val sang their hearts out, and Jim and I often joined in.

          Then there was the episode at a wayside overlooking the Wyoming prairie. Val had a craft box filled with beads for jewelry she was making. When she crawled out of the car with the box on her lap, she biffed the beads all over the parking lot.

          They could hear her wailing all the way to the Mississippi River. We picked up as many beads as we could, but finally had to shove her in the car, still screaming, and get back on the road.

          Another day, while driving through the empty spaces of the Badlands, she had to go to the bathroom. Nearly screaming once again, announcing she had to poop RIGHT NOW.

          Jim pulled the car over, and Val and I walked a short way through the barren landscape and around the backside of a knoll. Yes, she left her mark, as I watched for traffic, reptiles, and tourists out walking among the hills. 

Val left her mark somewhere out there. 

          The following year, we drove to Kentucky on vacation. Val once again had one crisis after another.

          The first day, it was something about her camera. I don’t even know what, and I don’t think she even knew. She was just in a mood.

          The next day, she left her sandals on the picnic table of a wayside when she went to wade in a stream. The only store in the next town – a Dollar General, I believe – only had one style of footwear in her size. Hot pink flipflops it was.

          Her brother, by the way, always had a fantastic time on these trips. They were as different as night and day growing up. It wasn’t until they were young adults that they grew close, much to this mother’s joy.

We sent the kids on an adventure tour of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Luckily, I had made sure she had a pair of old tennies on the trip. Nick had a great time crawling around in the cave. Val did okay; at least she didn't have any meltdowns. 

The Bible

      Blessed is the one who reads the words of God’s message, and blessed are the people who hear this message and do what is written in it. The time is near when all of this will happen. (Revelation 1:3, New Century Version)

I’m just wondering how many of you read your Bible? Or do you even have one? Maybe not a physical, paper copy, but at least a Bible app on your phone?

Are you familiar with the Bible? The difference between the Old and New Testaments? How the books in both Testaments are organized?

It just feels like I’ve always known those things. I can’t remember if I learned about the Bible in Sunday School or Confirmation Class, or just picked things up as I went along. Know what I’m saying?

Are there people reading this who don’t know that when you see John 3:16, the verse is in the book of John, which is the fourth book in the New Testament and the final book in the Gospel? And that the 3 is the number of the chapter and 16 is the verse. It makes it easy to find verses that way.  And if you didn’t know that, don’t feel bad. When I was teaching Sunday School, one of my students knew what those numbers meant, but when she was reading her Bible, all those numbers in the middle of the words threw her off.

Anyway, I know I have shared a lot of Bible verses here over the years, and I hope some of them stuck with you. I hope to share a lot more verses in the coming years. For now, though, I want to delve more into the Bible – who wrote it, what we know about those people, what texts were chosen to be included in the Bible and why, and why some versions of the Bible have more books in it than others. 

I’ve told you many times that I’m not a Bible scholar, but I think that we can all stand to learn a little bit more about it. Let’s see where this leads us – starting next Sunday. 😉

The Illness and Injury Years - Val's Story, Chapter 5

(At least she didn't try downhill skiing.)

I know all kids go through illnesses and injuries, but Val sure had more than her share.

          When she was just a year old, Nick woke up one morning with an itchy rash which quickly turned into painful pustules. The year was 1991, when the vaccine against chicken pox was still being studied in American labs. This was also the time when all responsible moms sent their kids to whoever’s house had a chickenpox outbreak, so their kids could get it and get it “over with”. I was glad Nick contracted it then, before he started kindergarten in a few weeks. 

          And even though his sister was only a year old, I was relieved when a week or so later, she broke out as well.

          Four years later, a few days after she started kindergarten, I got the first call from the school nurse. “Val hit her head on the playground. She says her head hurts, but otherwise seems fine. I still recommend you take her to the hospital after school to get checked out.”

          Hours and an MRI later, the ER doctor confirmed she had a mild concussion and gave me the usual instructions of what to watch for. She was a little sick to her stomach that night, and the headache continued for a few days. It slowed her down for a while, but that was okay. She needed to slow down.

          The following fall, within a week of school starting, the school nurse called again. Val was throwing up. I sighed into the phone; this was becoming a trend. And it was.

          In August 1997, my sister Pat took the kids and me camping in Michigan’s UP. We had a great time, all of us tromping through the woods, making s’mores over the campfire, and sleeping in the pop-up camper.

          About a month later, Val came home from school more tired than usual. At bedtime, she told me she was too achy to even get her pajamas on by herself. I pulled her t-shirt off over her head, and what I saw on her chest and back told me immediately what was wrong with her. A round welt the size of a small saucer on one side of her chest and a larger one on her back.

          If you don’t live in northern Wisconsin or some other thickly wooded area, you might have been alarmed or at least confused. After working in the medical field for ten years and seeing many patients with this same illness, I had never seen it with quite such a remarkable presentation. But I still knew in a second. She had Lyme’s Disease.

          The next day, after Val had her blood drawn, the lab tech told me that the test turned bright pink instantly, faster than anyone else’s had, confirming what we already knew.

          This time, I called the school nurse to let her know that Val might be out for a few days until her symptoms abated and she felt better.

          My poor little girl finally had a reprieve of a few years until September 14, 2001.

          It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. Nick was mowing the lawn on the riding mower, and Val was riding her bike around the yard. Hubby and I were doing something in the front yard when Nick yelled out, “Val’s screaming.” He pointed to the side of the house.

(Picture not taken that particular day, but all this padding would not have helped anyway.)

          We ran to find her crumpled underneath her bike, howling in pain. We carefully picked her up, and she grabbed her arm.

          Just like that tell-tale Lyme’s rash, Hubby and I both knew right away what was wrong. Forever after, he said her right forearm looked like the kid who broke his arm in one of the Harry Potter movies. Floppy. Okay, that’s overly dramatic, but the middle of her arm truly was bent back noticeably.

          I grabbed the car keys from the house while her step-dad carried her to the car. We left Nick alone, still mowing the lawn and probably unaware.

          The doctor once again confirmed what I already knew and what the X-ray showed. She had broken and displaced both the ulna and radius bones in her forearm.

          We were sent to the hospital in the next town over, one that had an orthopedic surgeon on call. He gave her some sedation, set her arm, and wrapped it in a cast from her fingertips to halfway up her shoulder.

          For six weeks, with her right arm in a sling, she learned to write, eat, and brush her teeth with her left arm. It would be one skill that served her well over the years. When she got contact lenses a few years later, she learned to put them in each eye at the same time, using her left hand for the left eye and her right hand for the right.

          It seemed that finally the curse was broken, at least for a while.

Life Happening - Val's Story, chapter 4, part 2

Life happened, as it always does. They say that if three or more stressful events occur within a year – such as a death in the family or serious illness – it wears a person down and can cause all kinds of problems. 1993 would be the first of many of those years for me.

          My marriage to the kids’ dad had been shaky for a while, and it finally fell apart completely. Naturally, it would be easy for me to blame him, but I know in my head that it takes two people working on it to keep any relationship going. My relationship was mostly with my babies, and his was with his friends. He moved out in March of 1993, and our divorce was final on November 11. I insisted on keeping the house because it was our children’s home. He cooperated in everything.

          Don’t I wish that was all that happened that year.

          My dad had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years before, and it was progressing quickly. By April of 1993, Mom was worn to a frazzle taking care of him. My siblings and I finally convinced her to admit him to the nursing home.

          She took Dad in on a Friday morning, and the next day, he choked on some food – it’s common for people with advanced dementia to forget how to swallow. This choking incident resulted in aspiration pneumonia, forcing them to admit him to the hospital on Sunday.

          Unless Mom agreed to put in a feeding tube, the doctors told her he would continue to choke on his food. We all agreed that a feeding tube would only prolong a life he was no longer living.

          He passed away on Thursday with me and Mom, his wife of 48 years, by his side.

          But that still wasn’t all for that year.

          One September Saturday morning, my sister Pat woke up with severe abdominal pain. Her husband took her to the ER, and the next morning, Dr. Skye and the surgeon on call performed an emergency hysterectomy.

          Initially, they thought the large growth in her uterus was an unruly fibroid. When the pathology came back a few weeks later, the report showed she had leiomyosarcoma, a rare and very deadly cancer.

          A group of specialists discussed her case and decided to keep close tabs on her. They hoped that all of the cancer cells had been removed during surgery.

          She wasn’t only my sister; she was my best friend. My kids were just as close to her, worshipping the ground she walked on. I can still hear their little voices announcing, “Aunt Patti’s here,” whenever she drove into our yard.

          It had been a bad year, but better years would follow. And so would bad ones.

Aunt Patti, Val and Nick, April 18, 1993, four days after Val turned 3 and 11 days before my dad died.