What a Legacy

My children have been so blessed with 2 sets of grandparents and 2 sets of great grandparents who all live fairly close (no matter the "address" my parents pretend to have ;) I know how unique and lucky this is for them, and I am quite sure they know how lucky they are. When Merrill and I were dating I lived with my Grandpa and Grandma Herbert and I loved every minute of time I spent there. Merrill spent a lot of time there with me and fell in love with the neighborhood while driving to pick me up and decided to buy a home in the same ward they live in...twice! I am not going to go into how I feel about that right now, but one of the very best blessings that has come from that is the opportunity for my children to get to know their great grandparents and see them every week. If you know them, you know how special they are. They are very different from each other, but I love them both very much and I am so grateful for the time I spent living there getting to know them. Grandma is one of the most positive people I know and I absolutely love her personality. I'll ask her how she is doing and she says,"I can't see out of this eye, but it doesn't hurt so I can't complain. I can't drive...but I don't like to anyway so that's okay." My Grandpa on the other hand is very straight forward and to the point. He has never been one to be especially "friendly", but I always knew he loved me. He has ALWAYS done the right thing, even when it was not especially "popular" to do the right thing. I can remember years ago someone telling me that my grandpa had called the city to report them as renting illegally. I could not believe he would do something like that so I told them that I was sure he had not done that and then I called him to verify that I was right. As it turned out I was wrong! I could not believe it, how embarrassing, these were neighbors, I was her visiting teacher, how could he do that? Then he explained to me why he had done it, and instantly I knew he was right, and I totally supported him in what he had done. He has been fighting bone cancer for about 3 years now and while earlier this year he had been given a clean bill of health, the cancer has come back and is quickly killing him. He had intensive treatments the week before Christmas to try and stop the cancer. He was released on Christmas Eve, and we were able to have our family Christmas party with him. What a treasure it was to have him there.

The party is usually at his home, but this year because he needed to be within 15 minutes of the hospital, we had it at the Governors Mansion. At the end of our program he said a few words which were priceless, but the one thing that stands out to me is this,"put the past behind you and look forward to the future, forget about the mistakes you have made and move on." I'm sure that's not exactly what he said, but that's what I heard. He's very ill now with RSV and has been at the University Hospital since the week of Christmas. Merrill and I went to see him last night and I know his days are numbered. I will miss seeing him every Sunday at church. One day he told me (after I had not been to church)," we don't go to Church for the people, we go for ourselves, we go to learn how to be better people". He was full of love for the gospel, and spent his entire life serving everyone around him, and I am so grateful that I lived close enough to see it first hand. I hope he is able to come home, even if it's to die, so my children are able to say goodbye to a man who has played a role in their life and been such a good example to them. In November, he called and said he had 1 extra ticket to a BYU basketball game and asked if anyone wanted to go with him. Merrill had been planning on taking the boys and we already had 2 tickets so he was just going to buy another ticket at the game. I asked Richard if he wanted to go with Grandpa Herbert and at first he didn't want to go, but with a little coaxing, he went. What a treasure for Richard to have been able to spend that time with him one on one. I consider living so close to him all of these years a gift, and if nothing else good has come from it at least my children have known their great grandfather and for that I have to be glad. If you want to read a great article about him, click on "What a Legacy" at the top of this post.

Goodbye grandpa, I love you!