Grandma Lucas

On Sunday, October 25, I got a text from my mom saying that my grandma had fallen on Friday and broken her back. Grandma had been living in an assisted living facility in Plain City, called Seasons. Apparently she fell against the door of the room so the staff had to go the back way around to go get her. At first she didn't seem to be in that much trouble. The next two days she talked to my mom on the phone like normal, but complained that her back hurt. The on Sunday it started to hurt a lot. They didn't even do a x-ray or anything because she was on hospice and the treatment wouldn't have changed no matter if it was broken or not. She was in a lot of pain and so she was given a lot of pain killers. So much so that she couldn't eat or drink and thus it was an end of life situation.  We hesitated for a day, trying to figure out what to do, but eventually decided to go up there to say goodbye before it was too late. The only reason we hesitated was because of covid and exposing our sweet little baby to gas stations, people, and my parents' house which wasn't very quarantined. Eventually we decided to get an airbnb in North Ogden where we could stay secluded, but still able to wear masks and visit when we wanted to. 

This was ridiculous in some ways because covid was spiking in Utah at the time and I couldn't believe I was taking my baby there. But it was ridiculous that I was considering not going. This was my Grandma! I grew up next door to her. I love her! She is an important person in my life. I have always thought that I wanted to grow up to be like her. 

Grandma was kind, patient, adventurous, faithful, hard-working, generous, fun, thrifty, brave, loving, funny, and so smart. Of course I want to be just like her. What a beautiful, wonderful soul. 

I think in a lot of ways Grandma's outward personality was no-nonsense, get to work, make things happen women, but there was a deep sentimental side to her. For example, she never ever took off her wedding band after getting married. It was the tiniest little sliver of a band in all my remembrance, and there was no was it was coming off of her arthritic fingers at that point anyway. But that is just the sweetest gesture. They were the cutest couple. This picture was from their honeymoon in Los Angeles. 

So we headed up there to try to say goodbye before it was too late. Four month old Darcy didn't make this easy. She blew out of her diaper by Flagstaff. 

It was weird to need to use our van. Our family is huge all of the sudden. The other girls did great on the drive... Audiobooks for the win!

Darcy did pretty well too for the first half of the day. I really expected her to sleep for a lot of the drive. No such luck. Her naps were between 5 to 10 minutes long with just one lasting 20 minutes. As you can imagine, that led to one grumpy baby. Poor girl was so so sad. We all did what we could. Lots of stops for nursing, singing to her, playing with her. I even spent a lot of time cranked around in my seat trying to play with her with my hands. Poor girl just ended up having to cry for the last couple hours of the drive. We just needed to get there and stop driving.

We ended up getting there around 11:30pm. It was a long long day of driving. And we lost an hour on our way there so that made it seem even later than it was.

When we got there we got sanitizing wipes first thing and went in and disinfected everything we could possibly think of to touch. In addition to sanitizing wipes, I brought bleach spray and paper towels and thoroughly disinfected the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen sink was particularly gross and needed a thorough scrubbing. We ended up going to bed maybe around 2:00 that night after all of the cleaning. Of course the girls got to bed earlier than that.

In a disappointing twist of fate my grandma died that night. So she was actually alive when we arrived in Ogden super late, but I was planning on going out in the morning. Nobody knew she was that close to death, the hospice nurse thought that she had a couple of more days. In some ways I'm really glad she didn't have to suffer longer and was able to pass away quickly, but I'm really disappointed I didn't have a chance to say goodbye especially after we had made such a long sad drive with our baby.

I got a call from my sister Kayla, well actually John got a call and woke me up. She said that the mortuary people had not come to pick up her body yet, so I could come out to the house and say goodbye there.

And aside here, they had decided to bring her to her home after the end of life fall. I don't know if it really made a difference for Grandma, but they say this sounds and smell of home can be comforting to those who are dying. At least the family felt better about that situation.

I went out there in a hurry to try to give my grandma a quick hug before they took her body away. My mom, sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins were all there discussing funeral arrangements. I guess it was good to see them, but I was disappointed to not get a private moment with my grandma. It was hard to see her like that. I gave her body a hug and it was all stiff. I also heard some rattling sounds coming from her mouth, which was unsettling. 

I talked with me family for a few minutes, but then had to leave to go feed Darcy who hadn't nurses yet that morning. Side note, I learned from this experience that crying with a mask on is super unpleasant. 

Meanwhile, back at the rental the girls were getting started on school and John on work. Doing everything online meant that those things could continue even from Utah, but they did love the fun new surroundings, especially that big bean bag.

The baby girl was thrilled to not be doing another driving day. 

After school and work, it was time to enjoy the rental. I remember playing this game of Life a lot at my grandparents' house, so it was very appropriate that the rental had this for us to play. 

John took the kids on a walk (avoiding people) and it was so sweet that the girls off their own volition held hands as they walked. 

There was also a small playset in the owner's yard. The kids enjoyed that, but I didn't want them playing on it without supervision (which was disappointing). It was out of sight from any views from the rental. 

Baby Darcy looked so tiny and cute on the bean bag.

We decided to splurge on the rental because we knew it would be a bad idea to go visit families or do other things around people. (Like I said covid was spiking really bad in Utah at the time.) So we knew we would want to stay put and avoid people as much as possible. 

We found this Rec Room rental which had all of these fun activities in the unit. First there was a big projector with a big sectional and love sack. It was hooked to all of the streaming services, which made for some fun movie nights.

Then there was a basketball hoop jump shot game. This was way more fun than I thought it would be. It helped that there were two hoops so there could be an element of competition between the two people playing. We played a lot of basketball during our visit. My shoulders and back were definitely sore from the unaccustomed movement. It was a ton of fun!

Holland's favorite activity was the air hockey table. I've always loved air hockey and is still a good time. This air hockey table had an unusual element in that one of the pucks that had straight sides. It made the ricocheting a little more random.

But the biggest hit of this whole rental was the combo ping pong table and pool table. We all loved loved it. We all play them so much. We learned a couple of things. First we need a lot more practice in order to be very good at those games. Second, ping pong is a lot of fun with multiple balls and multiple players. Third, we don't actually know the rules to pool. It turns out there's a lot of variations of that game, and the game as John and I understood it isn't necessarily the end all rules. We ended up adapting to help our family have a successful game. For instance, when someone scratches we don't have them take a ball out of a pocket. That was how we were playing at first and it was pretty agonizing. Fourth, we want to buy a house where we can fit a pool table. We all just loved it.

We were really glad we got the big nice rental with all of the fun unusual activities because we ended up deciding to stay at extra few days so we could attend my grandma's funeral. I think we only extended about 3 days, but it was really nice that the place we were staying was big and nice and fun. 

We didn't worry too much about having Holland do online school while we were there, but the older two girls tried to do school as much as they could. This helped them not be super behind when we got home. John worked a bunch too, but he was able to get some bereavement time off as well.

So even though we were in Utah for such a sad reason and we couldn't even see our families, at least we were able to spend some time away from our house and do some fun things with our kids. It was a bit of a break from the normal routine.

The kids had more time to play than usual and adore on their baby sister. Miriam likes to take photos of her sweet baby sister, just like her mama.

I still think it is so funny that Darcy likes sticking her fingers in my mouth while she nurses. Don't scratch my gums, baby! To be honest recently (at 6 months old) she has stopped doing this as much, which is probably for the best because she has started grabbing more things in general... Like her diaper area when she is getting changed. 

Oh, look. She can sleep in the car, just not on long drives. 

While we were there the holiday of Halloween happened. Now while we aren't Halloween fans really, I still wanted to do something fun with the kids. 

I didn't think about this at all while trying to pack for the trip, but thankfully Miriam thought to throw in a mask and headband. So they all have the same costume this year. Darcy was surprisingly happy about us dressing her up in the mask, although we did have to tie the headband in the back so it would be small enough for her. 

Thank you Miriam for bringing everyone's costume!

So even though we didn't go trick or treating because of covid, we didn't want the kids to miss out on candy fun! We bought them each a bag of their favorite candy and set up an scavenger hunt for them to find it. It turned out pretty fun. 

After a couple of days of being there, I caught all three of my little readers reading at the same time despite all of the fun things to do. Don't worry though, we still got plenty of enjoyment out of all the fun activities.

My two older girls tend to love the same books. Right now they love the Wings of Fire series and the 39 Clues series. They are very animated at dinner talking about them, and Miriam loves to quote them to us.

Oh, she's cuddling me, take a picture, quick!!

So while we were in Utah, we decided to take the risk to go visit grandparents and introduce them to Darcy. We were as careful as we could be about that and keep masks on, use hand sanitizer, and stay outside. 

Darcy likes her grandparents a lot. 

One other fun perk of this rental was the awesome beds. Ours was king sized which was fun. It could fit our whole family which is getting to be a lot of people. But more importantly it has got to have been the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. Just the perfect amount of cushion vs. support. We actually took the sheets off when we left so we could look what kind of mattress it was. Unfortunately we couldn't find the exact mattress online, but we did buy one (we needed to buy a mattress anyway) we thought was close, but it wasn't quite the same. 

One funny story about these bathroom signs. About a day or two after arriving I noticed these little signs were missing from the bathroom. Miriam in all seriousness had hid them in the vanity because, "they had inappropriate potty jokes on them." Little sweetheart. We left them hidden away for the duration, but put them back up when we were packing up to leave.

Happy baby in the love sack. It was a fun activity to all take turns jumping onto this. 

We really debated about what to do about Grandma's funeral. But eventually went with what we thought her wishes would be--a formal funeral at a mortuary not at the church with the bishop she didn't like. 

John and I were also concerned about being around the whole family when covid was spiking so bad. We decided that just I would attend the funeral for several reasons. One being so we didn't have to bring the little baby around people and tell everyone to keep their distance from her. Another reason is so I could use that time to remember and mourn my grandma--not be the social distancing police between my kids and their cousins. Also, it was just less exposure to my family--I could wear an n95 mask and be relatively protected (we hoped!). 

So my family stayed at the rental and watched the live stream of the funeral, while I attended and gave my little talk. We did go early so everyone could view her in the casket and say goodbye. 

The funeral itself was nice. All of the grandkids participated in some way, and the great grandchildren all sang her favorite primary song. Of course my girls weren't there to participate, but we made a recording of them singing the first verse and the other kids sang the second verse. Patti made such a wonderful video. And there was plenty of crying going around. 

The grandkids were the pallbearers and we brought her over to the mausoleum. It was unusual but kind of nice to have such a small, intimate funeral. It was awful though to have to wear masks and not hug each other. I just wanted to mourn my grandma together with my family. We even skipped out on the family dinner as well. 

Her spot right at the very top, next to Grandpa. 

Beautiful casket and flowers.

Even now a few months later, it hardly feels real that she is gone. We drove home next day, and ended up in the back trying to help Darcy. This helped her take a little nap during the last hour or so of the drive.