Before I went to bed Saturday night at moms, I started looking through some of her old picture albums. Some of my favorite pictures...

Candice the day she was baptized...I was just thinking it was funny cause she still has the habit of holding her thumbs like that. I find myself doing it too!Camille, Keelee and Katie at grandmasKate's graduation from Snow College...in some ways it seems like yesterday, and in others... like a million years ago...Has she really been in California for 5 years?Still how I picture daddy.... Saturday night, I couldn't sleep so I started reading through some of the old diary's...came across 1995...(haven't ever brought myself to read that one...I guess I was just afraid of the emotion it would bring back to the surface) I've wondered though if there had been any warning signs before daddy's heart attack, so I went to the end of the year and began reading....nothing unusual...he didn't mention feeling tired or ill. Him and mom were both pretty active...they went walking together all the time and were never ones' to just sit around and watch tv. They were very involved in the extraction program and would go down to the first ward church about every day and work on getting names off of the microfilm. Daddy had still been locking up the church every night just as a favor to the bishop... they hadn't been custodians for a while. Anyway, their lives were full and happy with the church, family, and friends....( daddy talked about going for a walk just a few days before his heart attack and stopping in to visit the Drury's for a while...then over to the Tracey's for a few hours...life long friends.)

Then on the 4th of January, mom took over the writing. She told about hearing daddy fall in the tub while he was shaving, and her trying to get to him, but he had locked the door. She had to wait till he came to and crawled to the door. She half carried him into the east room and laid him on the couch. He had no strength. She said she was calling the ambulance, and he said no, but she did anyway. They got him hooked up to all the machines and his blood pressure and pulse were both really low.

Uncle Ken and Uncle Buzz came and gave him a blessing and he seemed to be feeling better after that. Mom came home and wrote in the diary that she was so worried about him...what would she do without him...he was her everything. But she felt like he was strong and could get through this and would get well....if that was what the Lord had planned for him.

(I found out later that as Ken pronounced the blessing on daddy, he was distinctly told that daddy would not get well...that it was his time to go home....so they blessed him accordingly)

Mom called us and let us know what was going on and Kelley and I went right up there. When we got to the hospital, we were able to have a good visit with him. He seemed pretty good and was joking with us about how silly it was for them to keep him in the hospital....He was ready to go home right now!

I think that was only the second time he had ever been in the hospital. One other time, he had been working out in the sun all day and hadn't drank enough water and had become very dehydrated. I happened to be at moms when this happened, and it was pretty scary! I had never seen him so sick. What really scared me was when he said " I had better go to the hospital!" ... Anyway, they got some i-v's going in him and fixed him up quick and we were back home later that night. Other than that... just never got real sick.

The resources there at the Logan regional hospital are pretty limited...I often wonder if he had been in a different hospital if maybe he could have survived. I'm sure they did all they could for him, but after a few days in that hospital, they life flighted him down to St. Marks hospital.

We brought mom down here and she stayed at our house while daddy was there. She got pretty sick while she was here with the flu and could hardly drag herself around, but wanted to be with daddy all she could so she had us help her get to the hospital where she could sit next to him. The doctors here did all they could for him, but the medication they were giving him for his heart made his kidneys not work right. They put him on a life support system and took mom and us girls into a different room to tell us what the situation was.

He wasn't going to get better. They could keep him alive on the life support system as long as we wanted, but he would not get well again. I was just in shock...I think we all were. It just didn't seem real. He was strong, healthy, unchanging...He was the rock and strength of our family.

After many tears, we had them turn off the life support system.

The next few days were very tender and spiritual. I could feel his spirit as we planned his funeral and in quiet moments, could feel his presence. His viewing was an amazing celebration of his life with friends and family lined up to share happy memories of his life....and the funeral was a continuation. He had a lot of friends....people whose life he had touched, that we never even knew. We wanted to sing but knew we wouldn't be able to do it. All the grand kids sang ...families can be together forever and I am a child of God... it was pretty tough for them too, but they did a good job.

It was a pretty special funeral. Very special man who lived a life of service to others.

The weather was unseasonably warm for January, a blessing for mom... made it not seem so awful. I was so grateful that Angie and Lisa were staying with mum and daddy at the time. Mom says time after time how grateful she was for their help, and just for them being there. It really eased the loneliness of coming home with out him.

Anyway, didn't mean to go off like that, but I guess it was time to let those memories out. He has been gone for 15 years now. It's kind of crazy but when I go to mum's I still feel like he could be outside raking leaves or shooting the breeze with one of the neighbors.

I like in one of mom's later entries in the diary where she writes how she can see his hand in so many things around the yard...like he knew he wouldn't be here for the next spring and had prepared things to make it easier for her to deal with the huge task of taking care of the yard.

Sounds like something he would do...sure do miss him.

This is one of my all time favorite pictures of daddy and K.C....he kind of looks like him a bit...I know that's where he got his beautiful blue-grey eyes from. This was the last picture we had of him...at his 80th birthday party at Maddox.

He sure didn't like being the center of attention and probably detested this party, but humored us and let us fuss over him for a minute.
Sure makes me realize how we need to treasure every precious moment we have together...

you just don't know how much time the Lord is going to give us and the people we love.