Grandpa Herbert

I'm finally getting around to this post. It feels kind of like when I went to start on Dallin's scrapbook...a year after he was born! I didn't feel like I could tackle it until then and even after a year I cried through the whole process and took about 6 hours to do one page. Anyway, it's not that bad this time but we've had family in town, two friends go into the hospital and I've watched their kids, a trip to the hospital for me (just paranoia and needing to hear the heartbeat...he decided to throw a party and actually MOVE as soon as she put the monitors on me...at 11:45 p.m.!!) and illnesses. Anyway, here's my recap of Grandpa Herbert's funeral.

My sister, Danica, and I flew together. She was 29 weeks pregnant (looking 50 weeks along, she would say) at the time and didn't want to go it alone. What was funny was that as we were squeezing into the aisle to try to deboard one of our planes, and running into each other's tummies, a lady a couple rows back said, "Are you sure you two should be flying right now?" I assured her that I was just past the halfway mark and so i was fine. And Danica told her she had OK'd it with her doctor. She informed us that she was a NICU nurse and she has seen many babies who come in because their mothers went into preterm labor from flying late in pregnancy. Ha! What a coincidence. Although the flights were, for the most part, terrible, we made it unscathed.

We stayed at my Grandma's house with my mom and my Uncle Bryan. That was nice because the night we got there, we sat around and talked about Grandpa. Open flood gates. Grandma and my mom told us lots of cool stories about his last few days. One thing I thought was funny was that he was diagnosed three years (or so) ago with prostate cancer. Since he had known that he wouldn't want to go through treatment because of his age and because he wanted to enjoy his life, they decided that they didn't need to keep track of what was going on in his body. When they went to the hospital a couple of weeks before he died because he was having trouble breathing, the doctors did some kind of a scan and found tumors in his lungs and lots of other places. The hospital doctor asked my grandma who his oncologist was. She asked him what an oncologist is!! Ha! She didn't even know it was a cancer doctor. He explained and she said they never saw one because they didn't want to know and worry about what was going on and he wasn't going to have treatment. So he asked when the last time he saw his primary doctor was and it was two years ago. Apparently he was very amazed that my grandpa had gotten along as well as he had with relatively no pain. That is the blessing and exactly what my grandpa always wanted. To enjoy the end of his life without pain and without worry about dying.

The next day was the funeral. It was hard, hard, hard. The blessing was being there with my mom (who had been through much of her grief already, was handling things well and just wanted to parade her children around to the other family members and friends there!), Danica, and my brother, Brandon. Brandon really took care of me, putting his arm around me, holding my hand. It was a very sweet moment for me. Thank you, Bran. You saved me that day. I was asked to give the opening prayer for the funeral, which I thought I would not be able to do. Amazingly enough, I stood up there and said the prayer without crying. I got many comments on it afterwards, from family, friends and twice from my grandparent's stake president. That made me feel nice. My Uncle Bryan gave a great life history for my grandpa full of really interesting things and, of course, lots of funny stuff, too. My grandpa LOVED a good laugh. My grandma had told my Uncle David that Grandpa had always promised her 20 years (Grandma is Grandpa's second wife. His first wife, my other grandma, died when I was 7.). When he died they had been married 23 years. Uncle David said she got a 13% bonus. That's my family...always being funny.

One of my favorite stories from the funeral was about my Uncle Bryan's 16th birthday. He already had his pilot's license, like my grandpa and my Uncle David. For his birthday, Grandpa handed him a small box. Uncle Bryan was feeling kind of jipped since 16 is a big birthday and he was hoping for something that would fit in a little bit bigger box. When he opened up the box, there were two keychains in there. One was a key to the airplane hanger and the other was a key to the airplane. Grandpa said, "I trust you. I know you'll take good care of the airplane." Hello! When some (spoiled rotten!) kids are getting cars for their 16th birthday, my Uncle Bryan was given access to the airplane! Uncle Bryan then just shared about how Grandpa was very trusting. That would be true. He had me driving his cars when I was probably 10. I was an old pro by the time I actually took my driving test.

After the funeral we went to the cemetery where he was buried with my grandmother, Ella Mae, and where my grandmother, Arleen, will be buried when she passes as well.

Grandpa just wanted to be buried in a pine box to save money. Sounds just like him! Grandma put her foot down and got this beautiful casket.

This is my family with Grandma and my cousin's wife and two daughters. Grandma bought herself two new dresses for the two days of services. She said Grandpa was always doing that...buying her two of something because she couldn't decide between them. She looked lovely and she said it made her feel good to have new clothes.

Here's my mom with her brothers and my Uncle David's wife. Yes, I have tall uncles. And a short mother. Where did my mom's lack of height come from? Her grandmother, who was only about 4'11"!! My uncles are so darned handsome.

After the family luncheon, one of my cousins, Jordan, had an awesome idea. See, during the summers when Grandpa and Grandma lived in Mesa, Arizona, my parents would drive us halfway and my grandparents would drive halfway. We'd meet in Blythe, California, a total armpit of a town, and my grandparents would take us to back to Mesa for a few weeks. What great memories! Just about the only thing in that desert town was a Thrifty's grocery store and they had ice cream for really cheap. They scooped it with this cylindrical-shaped thing. Grandpa would always take us there before headed out for Arizona. All of us cousins (seen here in the picture, except for my sister Feney) have vivid memories of stopping there for ice cream. Anyway, Jordan said there aren't any Thrifty stores anymore but there was a little convenience store that had Thrifty ice cream. And maybe they used the cylindrical-shaped scoopers! We decided that in Grandpa's memory, it was a must to go there and get a picture of us eating our Thrifty ice cream. It put such great smiles on our faces. I wish I could've thrown a picture up to Grandpa in heaven so he could get a smile out of it, too.

Me, Danica and my mom all went to the Mesa temple after that. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and we enjoyed walking around that beautiful temple.

And, of course, I couldn't leave without getting a picture of my favorite kind of trees...

Sisters...pregnant together again!

Me and my cute mom.

I'm sure there's lots of things I wanted to share for my benefit that I have forgotten about. It was a great trip to Arizona. It was wonderful to see my grandma, although it was very hard to leave her knowing that she would be alone and sad. It was wonderful to see my handsome cousins and spend time with family to cover the sad moments. I love my family. They are the greatest. I feel so blessed to have each of them.

The day before we left, we went to the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix (I think!). It was basically cacti. It was pretty fun. The cool part was that it was during a Chihuly glass exhibit so there was his glass stuff interspersed through everything. I loved that part.