Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

The weather this fall has been so nice. However, all of this nice weather and the golden leaves and the change of the season has been tempered by human winter. I have been, for the last two months, witnessing the death of a parent. In a way, this is a blessing because it prepares me for that inevitable transition to winter in my life.

However, it also makes me sad to know that I am now, at 60, moving to the twilight of my life. I can see that I am less useful, less vital, then I have been before. Those in their middle years look at me as a has been and not able to contribute as I did. I see them overlooking me.

Finally, I know that I am probably never going to be this good again. There is a slow but undeniable move down that long slippery slope to old age and inevitably to death. It is a hard to thing to face sometimes, but a necessary thing. I hope I measure up to that.

My heart was broken today. With my mom’s terminal illness and increasing weakness and inability to take care of herself has come a huge number of new experiences, none of which I have ever wanted to experience. We spend our entire lives acquiring earthly things and establishing a home. We identify ourselves with a location of a building on the face of the planet earth. We make that location into a home, personalizing it with things that identify who we are. We establish relationships with family and people around us. This gives us a feeling of permanency and at times weighs us down because we also drag all of those materialize things with us.

However, it is these relationships and things which help us to cope with the daily fight that challenges us as we live in this world. This home gives us a sense of permanency and defines who we are. Then comes along old age, illness, and the loss of cognitive function. The ability of the family to cope with illness is stretched to the limit. We become unable to care for ourselves because our strength, resolve, and abilities weaken. Sickness overwhelm our wills and the will and abilities of our families, and we fall upon outside medical assistance for help. Care becomes a 24 hour a day requirement. This new required level of care begins to define our home for us.

Because of the limitations of the family to deal with this health crisis, we have called on nursing institutions to help us out. With that comes living where those nursing institutions can play a part in providing care that the family is no longer able to provide. My dad, who has challenges of his own wants to return home with my mother. My dad is not able to provide the 24 hour type of care that will be required. He mentioned to me today, and my mother that he wanted to go home. My mother, probably understanding more than my dad the limitations of the care that he or the family can provide, turned to him and said, “We Have No Home Anymore”. She realizes that she may play out the end of her days in a place that is not really their home. This comment tore my heart. I am looking for alternatives to institutionalized care. I am not sure I will find it.

My mind has turned to the eternities much recently. Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the groundbreaking for the Payson Utah Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Today, I am sitting in a room at the Utah Valley Specialty Hospital with my father at the bedside of my mother. She is dying of Stage 2 Uterine Cancer and I can see the end coming.

I can’t say enough good things about my mom. She raised me, she instructed me in doing the right things and in how to be a good person. She is my role model. She is a Saint. Her illness has lead me to thinking a lot more about eternity and what we need to do to be ready to be there with our Lord and his Son.

I can think of nothing that would be better than living with my family forever in God’s Kingdom.

Much has happened this month in the saga of my parents. What has really happened is that the sickness of my mom has now been diagnosed and attempted to be treated. By now we were supposed to have been close to having radiation therapy done. What was lacking was the realization and knowledge that the treatment would almost kill my mother.

She didn’t do well with the treatment and eventually ended up in ICU with her kidney’s shutting down and her very sick. She has recovered somewhat, but now we face the real likelihood that she is not going to survive very long. We all eventually will face this reality but to have it happen to someone close to you is very difficult.

We are going to have to make end of life choices for her, as she nor my father seem to have the mental capacity now to make these choices for themselves. What we decide will also show what kind of people we are.

I received some terrible news on Friday. Early Thursday morning my sister called from American Fork to tell me that my 87 year old mother had been taken into and admitted to the hospital for heavy bleeding.

I spent most of Thursday at the hospital with her and my 91 year old father. She was discharged that day but only after her Gynecologist had set up an appointment with a specialist from the University of Utah in Gynecology/Oncology. That was an ominous referral. On Friday, my wife, daughter Julie and I took my mother and father to Salt Lake to see the physician. Part of the purpose of the visit was to get a biopsy which would hopefully tell us what was causing the bleeding and help us get her a diagnosis that would determine her course of treatment.

During the course of the biopsy, the physician described a “mass or tumor” on her cervix that was the likely cause of the bleeding and indicated that this didn’t look good. This was one of those moments in a person’s life when you face your worst fears. My mom probably has cancer. She has had good health up to now and has lived a long and productive life. However, to know that she might have a condition that might end that life was a great blow to me.

That sounds pretty petty, to be concerned for myself. However, I have always loved and looked up to my mother. Like most of the rest of us, mother’s mean just about everything to their children. I love her and want her to be around forever, to take care of me and my family. The idea that her life might come to an end is a blow to all of her children.

I just speak for myself at this point. I love my parents, and they have always been a comfort to me. She has feed me, has washed my clothes, has rejoiced in my marriage to my dear wife, has rejoiced in her grandchildren. She has rejoiced in my accomplishments and the accomplishments of my children, and she has cried with me when things didn’t go well and we faced challenges. She has been there when I had my heart operated on. She has been there when my children have had their challenges, and has attended their weddings and all the other things that grandmas do. She has a great love for all living things. She adores her dog Tascha, who just happens to really belong to my sister and her family. She has loved each one of us and nurtured us. She is my mother, and if this is terminal, I will miss her terribly. Sometimes life just isn’t easy.

Had a very minor surgery on Thursday. I had a ganglion cyst removed from my finger. On my return home from the hospital, I greeted my “grandchildren” who are visiting. This minor diversion to the hospital has given me the chance to be with my grandchildren, all five of them, during the weekend. What a Grand time to be with the Grandchildren. What a great time I had admiring each and every one of them.

In the not too distant future I will begin my seventh decade here on the planet. Being around for that amount of time and looking at the prospect of my 7th decade allows me to take stock of where I am and what has happened in my life.

There have been a lot of changes over the years. Today we live in a society dominated by technology. I have a cell phone that can just about do anything. It has a GPS unit that can guide me to any destination with an address. I can watch videos on that phone. I can send a text message to friends or family. I can take a picture of my grandson or granddaughter and send it to my wife or to my friends. I can search for a restaurant, a church house, a recreation venue, or just about anything else on the phone. I can transfer money from one account to the other. What can’t I seem to do on this phone? I can view actual live events as they take place. I can do all of this on my phone. 40 years ago my family, not me, had a phone on a party line and we had a TV. However, it was black and white and all we could get were three national networks, three channels, and no way to record the programming. We had transistor radios, which I thought were fantastic. So much has changed.

What have I learned so far? I have learned that family relationships are paramount. I have learned that love can be deep and lasting, but that one must nourish it every day or it can become fleeting. I have learned that some people “have my back”, while others can’t wait to see me make a mistake or do harm to me and those I care about. I have learned that the definition of friendship and marriage for many people has taken on a brand new color. I understand that I no longer live in the same world that I grew up in. I savor reconnecting with old relationships. Modern technology, through such things as facebook, has allowed me to once again part of the lives that I knew so long ago. Friendship no longer needs to be just dependent on geography or phone calls. I have learned that the strength of use is fleeting, that with age new challenges arise to challenge our ability to cope. Pains appear where once youthful tissue was. Financial challenges set on us from all sides, either personally caused or cast upon us by circumstances no longer under our control. I have learned that public service, just like church or family service, can bring much satisfaction. It can also bring challenges.

I have learned to appreciate the good. There is so much that is not so good in this world, but there is also so much joy and beauty in the world. There is natural beauty, beauty created by man, and mostly the beauty created by God. There are things that make it all worth it, outside of the family and the human relationships. I still treasure sunrises and sunsets. I treasure the beauty of newly fallen snow. Mountains intrigue me.

What is the outlook for this seventh decade? Well, I hope to be able to savor the family relationships that I have, watching grandchildren grow up, and watching my children mature and lead their own families. I look forward to building current relationships and renewing others. I look forward to making good relationships, and I hope my memory lasts long enough to remember the relationships. I hope to improve my health. I hope to keep what I have. I hope to do good. I am so glad that I have this life.

I love looking into the eyes of a precious 4 month old granddaughter, with her smiling at me and cooing and so adorable. I love playing with a 3 year old granddaughter and enjoying her discussions with grandpa and her being a grown up girl. I love my 1 year old granddaughter who plays so coy and smiles so beautifully. She loves to play with my adoration. I love my 4 year old grandson and all the games he plays with grandpa. He has so much energy. I love my 2 year old grandson and his wonderful playfulness. I love being a father to such wonderful sons and daughters, and grandpa to my grandchildren. This is what life is all about.

It was fun entertainment. Bonnie, Julie, Shirley and I went to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. We saw two plays, The Music Man and Noises Off. They were both fun to watch. I wish we had been able to stay a few more days, take in more plays, and travel around in Southern Utah. However, it was just a quick trip.

Plays are fun. Family is better. It was a lot of fun talking with each other. The campus of Southern Utah University was also beautiful and it was a terrific place to be able to visit and experience some “culture”.

One of the greatest challenges as a grandparent who loves his grandchildren is to get them to warm up to him and be willing to give him the time of day. We visited Gordon and Christie yesterday and when we did so, Claire was her usual reserved and shy self.

During the course of the afternoon, I managed to get her to do some playing with me. It was a wonderful challenge and she warmed up a lot. Of course, leave it to the grandchild whisperer (my wife) to get her to let her hold her and carry her around while the mother and father were in site. I guess I lack some grandfathering skills. At least she wasn’t hiding from me anymore.

Another funny thing was what my oldest grand daughter said to me. She said our house was smaller than theirs and that we didn’t have any food there so we should stay with them. She was so cute. I love the grandkids.