Blizzard

   My parents commented that I was born at a time the weather was freezing cold, but I always assumed it was typical seasonal weather for mid-January.  Today I came across a page.  I’ve no idea where it came from, but it told a somewhat different story.

   The edge of the page is marked “1949”, the year I was born.  It was apparently called the Great Blizzard of ’49.  Here it is.

Possible Snow Flurries

   Nobody, not even the Weather Bureau, knew it was coming.  They reported ‘possible snow flurries.”  Whistling down from Alaska on January 2 came ‘snow flurries’ that lasted seven straight weeks. It turned out to be the worst storm in history.

   Wyoming and Colorado were hit first.  The blizzard spread like a cold white blanket over North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. It crossed the Rockies and struck Utah, Idaho and Nevada. It sent icy fingers down to sunny Arizona and New Mexico.  It spread eastward into Kansas and Oklahoma. Houses were buried to the roof as the storm raged on. Blinded by snow, cattle crowded together and died.

   By the middle of January, thousands of people were nearly without food. The strong winds blew powdery snow into cars and barns. Some livestock smothered in barns, buried under snow. Sheets of ice like iron covered feed supplies. Deer and elk, looking for food, flocked along the roads where snowplows had opened paths.

   The blizzard lasted from January 2 to February 19. On 25 of the 48 days there were big storms. The temperature dropped to 50 degrees below zero.

   Many tales of courage were told about rescue work. A bus driver named W. L. Owens saved many motorists. He found people asleep in cars and woke them up by slapping and rubbing them. On one of his rescue trips he had 96 people in a bus built for 40.

   Air Force planes dropped food, blankets and medical supplies to people and feed for animals. Radio stations told people to signal for the airplanes with lines in the snow. A single line in the snow meant a doctor was needed. Two lines called for medicine. An ‘F’ called for food.  “L” stood for fuel. And “LL” meant “we’re okay”.

   Luckily the right kind of weather followed the blizzard.  There are no floods, and the melting snow brought plenty of water for irrigation in the summer.  In the Great Blizzard of ’49, acts of human courage matched the power of nature.

   After reading this article, I realized that weather forecasting has greatly improved!  Snow plowing has improved but still is not up to the task of keeping Wyoming open in winter, and though helicopters had been invented, they were not in general use in 1949, which is why they used planes to drop emergency supplies to people.

    My parents may have understated the severity of the weather that winter.  It makes me even more impressed with my father who walked (they had no car) to downtown Lawrence, Kansas, and back to the hospital just to bring my mother the Spudnuts she loved.

   It was only 2 years later that they got to experience the Great Kansas Flood of 1951!

   The article must have come from some sort of yearbook telling events of various years.  Also included with the blizzard information came 2 more small articles as follows:

Presto!

   The Polaroid Land camera went on the market for $89.75.  This new invention produced a picture in just 60 seconds.

Television Rates Big

   When the 40s began, television was new. World War II nearly stopped the growth of American TV. Electronics factories were needed for war arms and equipment. But when the war was over, TV production took off. In 1946, the United States government lifted its wartime ban on the manufacture of new sets. Between 1949 and 1951, the number of TV sets in America jumped from one million to ten million!

Our family was not part of that ten million.  It was about 5 years later that we got our first television set.

The Bridge

The Bridge  by Nancy

   I am the bridge; the link of memories between Here She Comes and There She Goes. I am lucky enough to remember two great-grandmothers.  It’s hard for me to fathom that I was acquainted with people born in 1857 and 1871. My life interfaced with them only briefly.  I’m sure they had lifetimes full of memories, but my memories of them are just brief snapshots in time. My children never met them.  
   Great-grandma Freeman sat on a porch swing, making French cut green beans.  In her late 90s, her steady hands cut fully two times down the length of each bean. Her road began in 1857, 165 years ago. When she spoke she sounded different.  Instead of saying ‘again’ like I do, she always said ‘a-GAIN’ with a long a sound, probably a result of living the first 40+ years of her life in England. How was it for her getting to America?  I only know she was seasick.  Was she afraid?  I’ll never know.
    Great-grandma Clark lived in a small house behind her daughter’s.  I was intrigued as I was told she was blind.  At that time I assumed that meant she could see nothing.  In retrospect she probably had some vision, but was considered legally blind.  At least three of her grandchildren had similar vision problems.  My only real memory of her home was a sort of crocheted, ruffled doily.  The ruffles were not even on each side, but I thought it incredible that a blind person could crochet at all.  When did she know she was going blind and how did she feel about it?  No idea.
   Because these are my only memories of these great-grandmothers, they are the only memories I have to share with my descendants.  Maybe they will remember those brief memories, but more likely they will be lost.
   One generation closer to me are my grandparents.  I have more memories  of them but in my memories, they are all old people
with white hair.  When I saw the joints in Grandpa Freeman’s fingers I really thought nothing of them until I saw the same hand formations in my mother. I look at my hands and wonder, “will that be me someday?’
   I have fond memories of waking in the middle of the night to help my grandpas take their water turns.  I lived in Indiana as a child, where water simply fell from the sky.  My children grew up in Alaska where rain also took care of watering the lawn and garden. They didn’t know the magic of watering by moonlight with the water appearing when the gate was pulled up.  It’s a first hand memory that will be gone when I am gone.
    Of course, I have many years of memories with my parents. I remember them with dark hair, sewing, gardening, hiking, and serving.
My children only know them as elderly people with mobility and hearing problems. Unless I share my memories of them, they will never know of the hours they spent helping old Sister Welch, transporting us to swimming lessons, sewing clothes for us, helping with school assignments and all the things parents do for their young children. My children will more likely remember them sitting in their La-Z-Boy recliners and moving slowly. I have trouble imagining them as kids, eating the hated mush for breakfast, picking up blocks of ice for the ice box in their little red wagon or playing Halloween pranks.
   Of course my kids have lots of memories of me, but I’m sure my childhood is mostly a mystery to them other than  some stories I have written.
    My memories of them are mostly when they were young and still lived at home.  As they grew older and moved away, our memories diverged as they made memories with their own children.
   Now I have grandchildren, who I know and love, but I was not with them as much when they went to school and grew up. Our memories together are only a few.
    Last of all I have Reid and Leah, my great-grandchildren.  Reid playfully jumps everywhere he goes and chatters on and on.  He only knows I am one of many grandmas.  His sister Leah is still young enough she is still learning about the world, oblivious to anyone except those who care for her on a regular basis. How on earth did I get to be a great-grandmother?
    Here I am in the middle of all these seven generations, wondering what went on before me and what is happening after me. I am the bridge or link between them all.
   

The Making of Ilosone...starring Jim, Murph and Steve

 

 by Nancy

I knew these men as Jim, Murph and Dad, although at work, Dad was called Steve.  This article is from a November-December 1958 article in The Lilly Review.  I used to babysit for Jim's children.  I got into trouble with Murph's son because he assured me we were allowed to color on the white sheets on his bed.

Jim, Murph and Steve went on to collaborate on a number of other medicines which earned their company some great profits...and treated my frequent ear infections.

 

 

Vietnam - My Homefront by Nancy

    As I started high school in 1963, I didn’t even know where Vietnam was. By 1965 that all changed as ground troops began to be deployed. We watched the daily body count on the news. By graduation in 1967, the boys of my class had real concerns about their futures.  I never saw any anti war protests at that time, but they could have happened somewhere else.. We lived just 6 minutes from Fort Benjamin Harrison, so there was a strong military presence in our part of town.  Just outside the gate were the usual sleazy strip malls full of tattoo parlors, fast loan places and other businesses to lure in the young servicemen.
    During earlier wars, old wooden barracks were built and were still in use during the Vietnam era. A number of military schools were at Fort Harrison, which meant a fairly transient population as soldiers arrived and left the various schools, which included the Army Adjutant General School, Army Finance School, Interservice Postal School and DINFOS (Defense Information School).
Because so many of the schools were administrative, it was sometimes called ‘Uncle Ben’s Rest Home”.
    While the young soldiers lived in the old wood barracks and other types of housing, the more ranking officers lived on base sometimes in the old 3-story red brick dwellings built many years before when Ft. Harrison was first started.  The buildings were so old, that the 3rd floor was actually condemned as a fire hazard.
    We knew we had to watch the time whenever we went to visit the fort. First thing in the morning and around dinner time in the evening traffic ground to a halt as the MPs who directed the traffic stopped everything for raising and lowering the flag while  a solitary trumpet played.  All military personnel piled out of their cars, saluted and stood at attention while the flag was raised and lowered.
    By my senior year of high school, Fort Harrison was full; busy training the soldiers in their specialties.  Many of them were just young men not much older than I was, often away from their homes for the first time.
    We often met them when they found their way to church on Sunday morning. They seemed to relish the respite from the military life.  I think Dad and Mom could see them struggle, so soon our family had a new routine.  On Saturday we helped clean the house, though I think the brunt of that fell on Mom.  She usually found a large roast or ham for Sunday dinner after church. She also prepared side dishes such as jello salad, tossed salad, potatoes, several vegetables and desserts such as pies or banana cake.  We never knew who the dinner was for, but at church Mom would quietly gather up all the visitors and invite them to our house for Sunday dinner.
    Our kitchen was long and narrow..a galley kitchen with a table at one end just big enough for our family, but the living room was quite large.  The dining room table was on one end and could easily seat 12 to 14 people.  We had other smaller tables we could set up as well if needed.  Those young men soaked in the atmosphere of home and enjoyed those Sunday meals.
    Usually after dinner, rather than heading back to the barracks, they hung around, visiting, playing games, and shooting baskets at the hoop out on the driveway.
     For the most part we only saw them on Sunday as they were busy with their training the rest of the week.  Late one Saturday night the doorbell rang.  It was eight of our young soldier friends.  They explained their plight.  Apparently, the sergeant didn’t like people going to church.  He figured anyone trying to attend church was just sloughing, so he’d come around about 5 AM on Sunday mornings and assign church goers to KP for that day.  These fellows got wind of the plan and left on Saturday night.  They asked if they could sleep on our floor that night so they wouldn’t be there at 5 AM for the sergeant to wake them up.
    Many of them began to think of Mom as a sort of surrogate mom, coming to her for advice with their various concerns.  
    We had a lot of fun entertaining these boys.  One day Mom made a variety of pies for dessert.  She asked each person what kind of pie he wanted.  One of them answered, “Round!”  She served him an entire pie and made sure he ate the whole thing.
     One Sunday a military bus showed up at church filled with 30 soldiers.  They were from a Utah National Guard Unit there for two weeks of training.  Of course, Mom invited them all home for dinner.  I’m sure the neighbors wondered about the military bus parked on the street in front of our home.
     Sometimes if a soldier was assigned to Fort Harrison for a longer time, he would bring his wife along and children if they had them.  Of course, there wasn’t enough housing for everyone, so they had to find affordable apartments elsewhere.  Mom also helped with that.  Many of the young families stayed with us briefly until they could locate a place.
     After getting to know so many of them, the hard part was when they left….usually to Vietnam.  Some wrote letters and some we never heard from again.  Some became lifelong friends.
     One family served a couple of tours at Fort Harrison.  During their last tour there they lived in one of the three-story brick houses as he was a Colonel by then. (Also they had 12 children!)  My senior year of high school, he was our early morning seminary teacher.  In our seminary there was no slouching about!  Everything was in order.  He thought the perfect remedy for sleepy students was for one student to play the piano (usually me) and all the other students to stand up and conduct the opening song together.  By the end of the school year, every seminary student could lead the music.
     In spite of the happy times, the war and uncertainty of the future always lurked in the back of our minds.  All the boys had to register for the draft when they turned 18.  Some served willingly, some served unwillingly.  Some managed to join the national guard which was not being sent to war.  Some moved to another country, such as Canada to avoid being drafted.  Some found they could not be drafted if they were college students.  Eventually they went to a lottery system of drafting people.  They did it by birth date, so there were 366 possible draft slots.  If September15th was the first number drawn, all those with that birth date were to go first.  We watched on tv with trepidation as the numbers were drawn.  Sometimes those numbers decided who lived or died…or who had their plans take a back seat to a stint in the military.
     Popular music also reflected the war with songs like “Ballad of the Green Berets” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by Peter, Paul and Mary.
     It was in 1967 or 1968 that I saw my first war protest.  It was organized by a group called Students for a Democratic Society at Utah State University.  There were maybe ten or twelve students marching in a circle on a small sunken plaza near the union building while chanting anti-war slogans.  Mostly the
students stood around the edges of the plaza just watching them.
     A friend whose husband was in Vietnam confided her worry to me when she hadn’t heard from her husband for over a month. Finally she received a letter, but was not happy about the contents.  In place of a message, there was just a single long line down the length of the paper.  At the end it said only, “Just thought I’d drop you a line.” She was not happy!
     Skipping ahead a few years to 1972, I had graduated from USU and was embarking on a Masters program at BYU.  As I was a foreign language major, I was required to take another language as well, so I chose Russian.  Our beginning Russian class had lots of opportunities to practice conversation and get to know one another.   After class one day, one of the other students asked me on a date.  He was different from most of the students…more mature, not as carefree.  He always wore a military field jacket.  As I got to know him, I realized a couple of things.  He was a Vietnam vet home from the war.  He was from  a farm family that was not particularly well-to-do, which is maybe why he wore that field jacket.  I think he didn’t have another coat.
    Even though he’d been home from the war for a year, the after effects were still with him.   We really didn’t know that what he had was called PTSD.  When the kids on the floor above him threw firecrackers out their window that blew up just outside his window, he yelled, “INCOMING!” and dived under the bed.  I’m sure his roommate wondered what was going on.
    While studying in the library one day, some jets flew low overhead.  He got some funny looks as he crawled out from under the table.
     Eventually we got married and he even got a new coat.  One day I asked him, “Did you ever kill anyone?”  His answer shocked me.  “I hope so,”  he said.
     In 1973 we didn’t have a TV, but we listened sadly to the radio as they described the fall of Vietnam.  
     Though he talked about his time in the military over the years, he really only talked about inconsequential things.
     It was 1998 when we realized that Vietnam was still present in our lives when it reared its ugly head in the form of an early heart attack as a result of exposure to Agent Orange.  A few years later, his best friend from Vietnam succumbed to ALS, also caused by Agent Orange.  The loss of his friend started to unlock the years of PTSD when he realized he couldn’t tamp down the memories any longer.  The Vietnam War wound its way through our lives for over 50 years.

Worst Job. - Roger

Worst Job -  Roger

Like everyone else, over the years I have had many jobs. Some good and some bad. A job is what you make it. If you decide to have fun you usually have fun and if you decide to be miserable you usually will be miserable. Some people go through life having glorious fun at every job they have and others spend 40 plus years in misery. There are exceptions. Let me tell you about my worst job. A job that no amount of good attitude could change.

In the interest of good taste I will do my best to speak delicately. At bases in Vietnam the disposal of solid waste was a problem. The problem was exacerbated by the lack of running water. Sanitation was extremely important. If it wasn’t taken care of it could cause health problems that would quickly incapacitate a military organization. Hollywood war movies never seem to show anyone taking care of this unheroic but certainly necessary task.

Outhouses were set up at several locations around the compound. They were not built over a hole as in the traditional rural American style but rather had a cut off 55 gallon drum about six inches high placed underneath each seat to serve as a tray. Usually there were four seats. A door was conveniently built into the back of the outhouse to facilitate the removal of the trays.

Sooner or later all lower ranking enlisted Marines could expect to have a turn, lasting about a week, at solid waste disposal. My turn came in the middle of the hot Southeast Asia summer. Five of us were on the crew. We were given a jeep to pull a flat bed trailer, spare pans, shovels and of course detailed instructions. Off we went to do our patriotic duty.

The first step was to remove the four pans from beneath the outhouse and empty the contents into a larger pan carried on the trailer. Fortunately the pans all had handles welded on them to make things a little easier. It didn’t take long to learn how to dump them into the larger pans. The pans also had a goodly supply of giant crawling insects of all descriptions as well as an infinite supply of maggots.

The stench was overpowering and very soon everyone became nauseous. Some of the troops lost their breakfast; some even lost last week’s breakfast. We started out wearing T-shirts but because of the mess quickly put on jackets. Of course this only made the heat worse.

We went from outhouse to outhouse collecting solid waste. As I recall there were probably twenty or so. By this time an unbelievable large cloud of flies of every description had accumulated. They landed on everything and crawled everywhere. We ended up putting on bandanas in a useless effort to keep the smell out of our noses and the flies out of our faces. Soon no one wanted to ride on the trailer. One person drove the jeep and everyone else walked along side. In a few hours after all the waste had been collected it was time to dispose of it.

We drove to a specially located area and began the final phase. First the cut off 55 drums were unloaded. They probably held 20 gallons or so if they were full. Usually they were only about half full. After being placed on the ground about three to five gallons of diesel fuel was poured in and stirred with a shovel. After a nice sludge of toilet paper, maggots, bugs, solid waste and diesel was made it was time for the disposal process. A piece of paper was lit and tossed into the mess. A nice hot fire started and a cloud of black oily smoke rolled skyward. An entirely new smell was added to the area. Coupled with a 120 degree day it did not make one think of ice cream sodas.

Now all we had to do was wait for it to burn out. As it was lunch time we headed for the mess hall on the other side of the compound. Upon arriving at the mess hall everyone found something in common; no one was hungry. Somehow all that work just didn’t cause anyone to develop an appetite like other work did. For lunch we just sat on a log.

After lunch the mess had pretty much burned itself out. We went back and stacked the pans to prepare for tomorrow. One little benefit of this detail was that when finished you were excused from further work for the rest of the day. Not a small benefit in the U.S. Marines. We went back to our living area and tried to clean up and scrape the smell off. It didn’t do much good as it started over again the next day.

I don’t know what lesson can be learned here. Perhaps it should be remembered that there are people who do this every day in order to live. Whenever I have to do a job I don’t particularly like, I remember this and realize that no matter what happens I have already done my worst job.

Memories

   Before everyone left to return to their homes, they helped me with several projects around the house.  One of those was to decide what to do with Roger’s clothing.  The pall bearers at the funeral all wore (and then kept) one of his ties.  The girls wanted to do something with his shirts, so we salvaged the fabric and put it aside for the future.
   Some weeks later some of the girls came back.  While everyone was working on various projects, Kathleen took out the fabric pieces and made squares out of the shirt sleeves.  Then she laid them out with sashing between the squares and sewed the quilt top together.  We even found a little Alaska Grown patch on one of his hats that we made part of the quilt.  Before she left we put the quilt on the frames.

 

   Jana embroidered the message on the back of the quilt.

   While I was taking Kathleen to the airport, Joey and Robert arrived.  While they were visiting, they helped me  tie the quilt.  

   Once the binding was done, I mailed it to Roger’s mom up in Alaska in his memory.

 

 

 

    Eventually we will make 6 more quilts from the shirt scraps that are left…one for me and one for each of the children.
  

Primrose 43 Signs Off

 Primrose 43 Signs Off

   2020 wasn’t my favorite year ever with earthquakes, fires, floods and then the appearance of the dreaded Covid-19 virus.  Suddenly we had to stay home all the time and learned a new term, “social distancing”.   If we had to go out, we were encouraged to wear masks.  People lost jobs, businesses closed, school ended two months early. Still, we congratulated ourselves on being able to endure life better than many.  Because we were retired, we didn’t worry about jobs and income.  We didn’t have children in school, so we didn’t have to take on home schooling with everything else.  It was certainly an inconvenience, but not a large crisis in our lives.
  When we started social distancing in March, little was known about how the virus was spread or how it was best treated.  We were used to running errands whenever we wanted, but now tried our best to find other ways to do things. We ordered our groceries online from the local grocery store and picked them up in the parking lot. We tried to adjust to shopping online for other things, too.
   I kept two lists on the kitchen counter; one for items we needed to buy and one of projects to be done. I tried to put household projects on the list a few at a time.  We planted and weeded the garden. We picked the strawberries, We painted the shed. We started a long term project of clearing out the herb garden because it was becoming too much for me to take care of.  
   One day we drove to the family cabin near Mantua where we did a socially distanced hike with my sister and brother-in-law, Eileen and Clark.  Another day we stopped by the cabin to visit and found Eileen and Clark digging up a hawthorn tree or bush.  Roger started helping with it and started chopping away at it with a dull chain saw and a shovel.  While digging, he lost his balance and ended up on his back on the ground.  He got right up and started working again.  
   When summer came, working outside was more pleasant in the morning before it got too hot.  I wanted to dig up a pot of lemon balm for a friend, but I couldn’t get it out, so I went to my usual source for help.  He had already gone out walking earlier that morning and was relaxing by watching some sort of documentary in his recliner, but paused it so he could come out and help me.  After looking over the situation, he went to the shed and came back with a shovel.  The plant was actually in a plastic five gallon bucket we had sunk down into the ground, so he had to slip the edge of the shovel blade down the inside of the bucket before jumping on it to push it down further.
   Have you ever tried one of those exercises where an event happens and different people are interviewed to find out what they observed?  Everyone observes something different.  It’s harder than it looks, just because it is so unexpected.
   It happened so quickly.  I thought I saw him jump on the shovel.  I heard a popping sound and then he fell, his body curved around the shovel like a comma.  In my memory, it is like a short video that plays over and over in my mind.  He landed with his shoulders and head on the sidewalk, but I couldn’t tell where he hit.
    He might have been knocked out briefly, but I don’t even know that.  I asked if he was okay, but when he tried to say something to me, it seemed like his tongue was too thick to speak clearly. He tried to get up a couple of times, but I urged him to rest there a bit as I was afraid if he got up, he’d fall and really hurt himself.  
    I debated whether I should call for help.  If it was like his fall a few weeks earlier, he’d likely be unhappy that I called 911, but when I pulled my phone out, he didn’t object.  As I talked to the dispatcher he looked so uncomfortable there, that I ran into the house and grabbed a pillow and quilt from the couch. He raised his head so I could slip the pillow under him.  As we waited for the ambulance, a few raindrops started to fall, so I ran into the garage and got an umbrella out and put it over him to shield him.  
    Shortly before the ambulance arrived he turned himself onto his right side.  His arms were still clinched up near his chest….and they shook as if he was having a small seizure.  As the EMTs came, he was nauseated and had huge drops of sweat all over his face.
   Months later this is still the movie I see over and over in my mind as he falls over and over.  I start to second guess myself.  I shouldn’t have asked him to dig up that plant.  I should have stood behind him. I should have called for help without waiting a few minutes.
   It seemed like forever for help to arrive, but really it was just 12 minutes.  It was Wednesday morning, so one of the neighbor kids was mowing our park strip.  The EMT who got out first suggested she go mow somewhere else so they could hear.
   While one EMT started to check him out, the other asked me what had happened.  He wanted to know if I wanted them to just check him out or if I wanted them to transport him.  I was a bit surprised by that question.  Why would I call them if I didn’t want them to transport him? Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him respond once to the EMT, but after that he stopped making any sounds.
    They loaded him up and took him away while my neighbor tried to console me by telling me some less ominous things it could be.  I gathered up my things and went to the hospital.  I was hopeful.
   At the hospital I quickly parked in the lot nearest the emergency department but was stopped at the door to use hand sanitizer and have my temperature taken because the hospital was locked down due to the pandemic.  
   A lady was walking down the hall toward me, asking for me by name.  She introduced herself as a hospital social worker as she showed me into a small waiting room.  I said, “oh, this is bad!”  I remembered this scene from 1996 when I walked into Providence Hospital in Anchorage, when we were ushered into a similar small room….only to be met by a hospital chaplain, who told us my father-in-law had died.
    Still I hoped.
     The social worker said I could go back in a few minutes, but right now there were so many people in the room working on him and then he had to go have a CT scan.  As I was hearing these things, my optimistic nature was thinking that he had endured so many things and always popped back.  He had four heart attacks of various strengths due to his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, resulting in four stents and finally double bypass surgery from 1998-2013
    Eventually she returned to take me to see him.  Before I could enter the room I was swathed in an enormous yellow paper gown and a mask.  She urged me to move closer.  I wanted to stay out of the way for all the people taking care of him, but then she said a most horrifying thing, “Go talk to him.  They say hearing is the last thing to go.”   The last thing?
    After just a few minutes by his side, the ER doctor asked me to sit down with him.
    “I’m sorry I have to be so blunt, but you need to make a decision, and you need to make it quickly.  Life Flight has already been called and they are only one minute out, so you have to decide what to do in that one minute.”  Life Flight?  That is for critically ill  people!  “He has a skull fracture and internal bleeding in his head.  If he stays here he WILL die.  If he goes to McKay-Dee, the neurosurgeon there could operate possibly depending on what he finds.  If they do surgery, he could be impaired.”
   How do you decide something like that?  I understood the urgency.  I thought how hard he worked to be healthy after all his heart problems…exercising and changing his diet.  He had said many times, when he died he hoped to go in the blink of an eye.  He was horrified at the thought of being impaired so someone else would have to take care of him.  Was I being selfish in wanting them to fix him?  To give him a chance?
   The room suddenly filled with the Life Flight  people.  There was no time left, so I agreed to have him transported.  Before I knew what was happening, we were out the door of the emergency room, running and rolling him down the sidewalk and across the road to the Life Flight helicopter.  It was so small!  How could they all fit?  They put him in first, having to turn him 90 degrees, then pushed me close to the door to tell him goodbye.  Was it goodbye until later or was it really goodbye for good?   The flight nurse wrote down my phone number and promised to call when they landed.  I felt a giant hole inside as they lifted off.
   The doctor had told me if they did surgery they wouldn’t know how successful it would be for at least 72 hours, so I hurried home and grabbed enough clothes to last me for three days.  I couldn’t leave the house because the phone kept ringing.  First a social worker from McKay-Dee called to ask some questions, then the flight nurse called to let me know they were safely in Ogden.  Of course, I was also trying to update the children.  Then neurosurgeon #1 called, followed minutes later by neurosurgeon #2.  They were united in their opinion.  Nothing could be done.  There would be no miracle surgery.  There would be no bouncing back.  They agreed to keep him under observation until the inevitable happened, so by the time I left the house, I already knew the ending.
  When I arrived at McKay-Dee he had been moved to the ICU.  Two of the children were there.  The other three were on their way, but had further to travel.  The goal was to help him stay with us until the children could get there to say goodbye, but even that couldn’t happen.  Because of restriction caused by Covid-19, the maximum amount of visitors to a patient was four, and only two at a time. We have five children.  Counting me, that was six potential visitors.  On top of everything else, they wanted me to choose which two of my children would not be allowed to tell their father goodbye!
    Knowing our situation, the nurses were kind, asking if there was any way they could help us.  The one help I wanted couldn’t be given.  When they asked again, I told them they couldn’t help because of the limit on visitors, but I so wanted him to have a blessing.  The nurse said she would look into it.  When she left the room, the doctor told me that if she couldn’t make it happen, he and the next doctor coming on duty would do it, for which I was most grateful.  It wasn’t long before the nurse brought in a CNA and a hospital security guard who gave him a blessing.
   Perhaps that is why the hard choice was removed from me.  It was shortly after that the nurse came in and said his blood pressure and heart rate were unstable; that sometimes that meant the patient was ‘transitioning’.  They had the monitors in his room turned off so we couldn’t see them, but they were monitoring him from the hall just outside his room.  Just as the nurse finished what she was saying I saw her glance at the hall and say, “Oh!”  The doctor hurried into the room and took his pulse, then looked at the nurse and said, “time of death, 18:45.”
   Blaine hadn’t made it to Las Vegas yet.  Bethany and her family were somewhere in Wyoming.  Kathleen’s flight wasn’t until the next morning.
   Maybe it was the blessing or maybe it was just meant to be.  I didn’t have to choose who could see him.  Instead he just peacefully slipped away…about the closest thing to the blink of an eye that could be imagined. Primrose 43 signed off for the last time.