The Quick Christmas Catch-up Pt. 1

Sorry about the long delay on this post. It's harder to keep up with this site than I thought it would be. :-) Anyways, here's a brief rundown of our Christmas. The first part is the hard part to write. The good part will come in my next post.

Some of you may know that my Grandpa Don (on my mom's side) was recently diagnosed with kidney cancer. By the time they caught it, it had already spread to his lungs. He was visiting my uncle in Alaska when he began having problems. The doctor there suspected pneumonia and thought he ought to be sent home where he could go to a hospital. (There's just a clinic where my uncle lives, and the doctor only visits from time to time. Between times, they have semi-trained personel who call for advice when they cannot help the patients). Anyways, he was bad enough that my uncle was afraid for him to travel alone, so he flew with him as far as Seattle, and my mom met him there and travelled with him the rest of the way home. They took him straight to the hospital in Tulsa from the airport, and he was diagnosed with cancer there. Arthur and I were able to make the trip to Oklahoma twice before he passed away. I was glad for the time I got to spend with him, but I wish he'd been awake and alert more when I was there. He passed away about a week and a half before Christmas. He had insisted on going home the day before, so they took him in an ambulance. My mom said in her entire lifetime, she never knew her dad to profess to be a Christian. However, he did a lot of soul searching and praying in the hospital, and before he died, he told her he had gotten saved and was ready to go. It's amazing how God works. His whole life, he was unable to profess Christianity. When he was in Alaska, before he got sick, my uncle told him, "Dad, I just feel like I need to tell you this, and I'm not sure why. You know, you can be saved if you want to. I'm not a preacher, and I don't know a lot of things, but I do know this. You have to trust and obey. If you do those two things, you can be saved. I just felt like I needed to tell you that." My grandpa said, "Don, I'm glad you said that." As far as I know, that was the extent of the conversation. Later, in the hospital, my grandpa asked my uncle if he was still preaching. At first, Uncle Don didn't remember, but when he did, he said, "Trust and obey, Dad." My grandpa was not normally a singer, but while he was drifting in and out mostly asleep, he was singing and saying something about "Hallelujah." Then, just before he left the hospital, he told my mom he was ready. The funeral was on Monday, December 17.

Arthur and I went down for the weekend. Mom and Dad were still out of electricity because of the ice storm. There was a LOT of damage. Fortunately, Dad's old generator for his welder had broken when he loaned it to someone, so he bought a new one just before the snowstorm. He was able to run the entire house on the new generator. He said the old one never would have handled the job. The drawback to generator life: 1. The gas it guzzles is EXPENSIVE right now!!! 2. It gets turned off at night. I guess it's not all bad... I had a good excuse to cuddle for warmth. :-) It was a hard weekend, but I'm glad Arthur was able to get off work to go with me. It was a looong drive back after the funeral on Monday, and Tuesday morning came all too soon! We had one weekend trip over and two more still to go!