October 2016 Update #91

This election season has witnessed an uncountable number of October surprises. In our own way, we have had many surprises (August, September & October).

Surprise grief

My mother, Helen, passed away in August from natural causes. Her health degenerated quickly once she returned to my sister’s apartment after two months in and out of hospitals. She briefly rallied each time once her sons and grandchildren came to visit. Eventually, she slipped away quietly in her sleep from natural causes about ten days after her 89^th birthday.

We held a memorial service at Helen’s home church in Saint Louis. This gave us a chance to reconnect with many friends and family members. My best friend from college – John Schudy – came up for the day. We recalled a few crazy stories from those days. My cousins from the Boston area flew in for the weekend. We hadn’t seen each other for decades so we took time to catch up about family and careers.

My niece – Heather Arwine – came up from Dallas with her husband Jason. He played with my kids (his cousins) and had a great time with everyone. Jason flew home on Sunday, attended church with a friend and made a commitment to Jesus Christ that evening. Two days later, his car drove off a highway into a field. The paramedics reported that he seemed dazed and confused so they took him to the hospital. He had minor injuries, but his nervous system inexplicably shut down. He died thirty-six hours later. Nothing could be done to reverse this condition despite the doctors’ best efforts.

Jason had made a lot of friends in the area as a champion of veteran’s and Parkinson’s issues. The Marines provided an honor guard, the local police and fire departments lined the route in salute, and a motorcycle group led the mile-long procession to rest in his family cemetery. He was just 37 years old.

After this, we learned that another cousin of mine – Valerie – had passed away from cancer. I hadn’t seen her since we were teenagers. She was in her late 50’s.

Surprise travel

We took a quickly planned trip to see my mother in North Carolina before she died. My brothers had come separately beforehand, but we had the honor to give Helen her last birthday party with cupcakes, balloons and presents. We also celebrated Adam’s third birthday several times on the trip. I cared for my mother a couple of times to give my sister a break, but I couldn’t do as much as I intended.

On the way, we stopped off at the Creation Museum and Noah’s Ark in Kentucky. Julie and Adam enjoyed the dinosaurs and petting zoo. We raided the gift shop where the kids found new favorite toys. All the walking wore us out completely.

Sarah’s brother, John, met the kids for the first time. We spent a couple days hanging out with him in Knoxville. He and Sarah spent some time going over her arrangement for his choir. We all learned more about the music program we bought. The extra day gave us a chance to visit John’s church and meet his pastor. The kids enjoyed a pleasant evening making crafts with other kids their age.

Once in North Carolina, Aunt April took Sarah and our kids to a children’s museum. The kids could climb into kid-sized planes, trains, and automobiles. They had toys and all sorts of other things to do. AA few days later, we took a day trip to the coast to see the WWII battleship and dip our toes in the Atlantic Ocean.

We had another surprise trip to Dallas to attend Jason’s funeral. We shuttled Heather’s car back to her which she left in Saint Louis so she could fly home after Jason’s car accident. The kids did surprisingly well on the 600-mile trip up and back. We set record times for our family. We drove down a day early so that we could meet up with friends from church. Sarah and I loved spending time with these folks Sunday morning and afternoon. We cannot thank them enough for everything they did for us.

Surprise repair

After reaching consensus with my sister concerning my mother’s condition earlier in the summer, Sarah and I decided to move out of the basement and begin to take over the upstairs bedrooms. This required a complete reorganization, purging, and moving almost every piece of furniture in the house. I had hoped to take the project in stages with enough time to clean and paint the rooms as needed. Helen’s death caught us right in the middle of repainting my office with stacks and piles of furniture all over the house. We rushed for the next three weeks to organize the place for the influx of relatives during the memorial service weekend.

In October, I finished the lower patio by building a retaining wall around parts that had sunk since the last time I worked on it decades ago. The extra dirt from the spring retaining wall project helped fill in the new platform so I could extend the patio to line up with steps on the side of the house. I painted the ceiling to hide stains from before the last roof repair and repainted the bathrooms, too. I helped my brother load a uHaul truck of furniture, gave away another large load of things to Salvation Army, and took two car-loads of boxes to Goodwill. We still have piles of electronics, tools, office supplies, and kitchen stuff to sort through.

While fixing up the house, I discovered more settling underneath the solarium floor. My mom had this area “fixed” several years ago. More evidence that the contractor didn’t do the job right. The empty space has caused me to change my plans and call in professionals to review the situation and give me estimates. Right in the middle of this, our water heater died. Surprise! The replacement part should arrive soon.

No surprise

Fortunately, we had no surprises with the kids this quarter. They passed their dental and doctor’s visits with flying colors. They enjoyed the dentist (surprise!). Julie has continued to gain weight. At last measure, she weighs exactly 50% of her age group. If she were any more normal, she would be sick!

Both kids love learning from Sarah. She works with them daily on assignments. They both took online assessments. Julie answered nearly every question correctly. Adam did very well for just turning three in August.

We lost about two months from our projects this quarter because of all the surprises.

My parents gave me the dubious honor of executor of the estate. I have lots of paperwork (yum!) to liquidate the house and other assets. I finished another pass through my second book. I hope to publish it before the end of the year.