The week from hell that allowed me to say goodbye... (part 3)

So, the visit with my family was bitter-sweet. It was fantastic getting to meet my brother Joe's family for the first time. I loved getting to see my other brother, Jared's, girls all grown up (or at least almost there). My brother Josh was a constant joy to be around. It was the first time we've all been together in over 10 years.

I spent my time not doing school work and enjoying my family. The day of the memorial service, Aaron, Josh, and I desperately tried to finish the video for the service. My brother is a composer and we wanted to use his music for the soundtrack. Unfortunately, my mom didn't give him the message (part of her memory loss problems at the moment) and so he didn't bring it in the easiest format to use... We were cut short on time, so we weren't able to get his music files to work. Our back-up plan was put in action. We made it to the service minutes before it started...

Needless to say, it was a very emotional service. My brother, Jared, was in his military dress uniform. Cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends filled the church. My grandmother was very beloved. We all cried, we all laughed. We all made our peace with my grandmother's passing. I still miss her, but the grief is no longer overwhelming...

Aaron was very supportive during the whole thing. However, that night, he recognized the grief that I felt and I'm sure it reminded him of when his grandfather passed away a few years ago, and we were unable to attend the memorial service for him. He was very close to his grandfather. He desperately wanted to see his own grandmother. So, we cut the visit with my family short by a day and drove the 4 hours to ABQ to see his grandma. We arrived around noon and were immediately welcomed. I love going to his grandma's house. She is such a special lady and it eased the pain in my heart some to know that we still have a grandmother here. We were treated to Posole as soon as we got there... Much better than I can make here with fresh ingredients and pork that had roasted all day... I'm drooling now as I write this thinking about that Posole...  Anyway...

We reconnected with Aaron's Uncle Tony, who took us around ABQ on the "Breaking Bad" tour. Aaron LOVED getting to see all the places where they film the show - one of which is blocks away from his grandma's house :) After the tour, we took Grandma Dora to Uncle Ernie's house, where we met Grandma Dora's sister and had a nice family dinner. Of course, this was a Sunday, so we all stayed to watch "Breaking Bad."

Our flight left from Denver the next morning, so we left immediately after "Breaking Bad" to head back to Denver. Driving through the night was exhausting, but worth the visit with Grandma Dora. We took two-hour driving shifts and made it to Denver around 4:30 AM. We were wiped, but that was OK. The travel gods smiled upon us that day. Aaron was jump-seating all the way, but my ticket was for 5:30 PM. We both made it stand-by on the flight out of Denver for Seattle and made it on the flight from Seattle to Juneau with literally minutes to spare. By the time we deplaned in Seattle, they had called for final boarding on the Juneau flight. We still had to list for the flight. Again, the flying gods smiled on us. We were 2 gates apart. Normally, you have to go from C or D concourse to N when traveling to Juneau, which adds time on the train in Seattle...

We made it home and bailed Noni out of jail, finally ate breakfast, and then took a nap. Aaron got to take it relatively easy the next day, but I had to work a 10-hour shift...

Why I walk...

I was six years old when my mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I turn 30 in October. That's 24 years of living with the disease... I have few sweet memories of my mother before the diagnosis... when she was relatively healthy...

Growing up, I had some semblance of a normal childhood. But, as I grew older, and my mom's abilities decreased, my responsibilities increased... It was the same for my brothers, but on a different level.

I love my mother very much, but there are times I feel she was taken from me at an early age. Which brings me to my point...

The illness has taken a larger toll on my mother's health in recent years. Her mobility is severely decreased. Where she was walking around about 50% of the time a few years ago, she is pretty much wheelchair bound now. Her mental faculties have been deteriorating for many years now, but it seems that it is getting worse as of late. She needs more constant care.

Thanks to the local MS Society Chapter, she has had her insurance reinstated (no thanks to the insurance company at my dad's work, "pre-existing condition"), she has a nurse come by a few times in the week to help her shower while my dad is at work, and she gets to go to a local group program a few times a week which allows her to get out of the house. Without the help of the MS society, my mom would be living a house-bound existence and wouldn't be getting the medical care she needs.

To give back to the MS Society, I decided to participate in the local walk for my area this year. It takes place this Saturday. I invite my readers to do something to support this organization. My mom is not the only one they help. You can click on the "Walk MS" icon on the top-left of my blog, to sponsor me in my walk. You can check out their website to see if there are any events scheduled in your area that you can participate in. If you know anyone who is afflicted with the disease, do it in their honor. If you don't know anyone, do it in honor of my mom, Alberta.

Coming up for air...

It feels like I have had no time for anything personal and fun in several weeks. Between insurance renewal season at work (that will last through July) and travel for my grandma's funeral, not to mention finals for school, I AM EXHAUSTED!

I am also EXHILARATED! I finished my classes in my last block, to the best of my ability and sanity. I am sad to say that my business class bore the brunt of my lack of focus in the last few weeks... I will be LUCKY if I pass that class with a C. On the bright side, my research paper ROCKED! (At least, everyone who read it that is NOT my instructor has been extremely pleased with it. I won't get my grade on it until probably Sunday.)

I have some new friends that I met through the PWC that moved to Juneau to fly. Unfortunately, they are being transferred to Skagway (SGY) for the summer, so I won't get to see them as much as I do now, but that is what flight benefits are for. Jessie can jump seat down here to see me and it gives Aaron an excuse to pull the Apache out of the hanger if we want to go there :) Thanks go out to Partner of a Pilot for sending her my way! And MANY THANKS go to Jessie and Jeff for taking my mind off finals yesterday with some classic hanging out at a Mexican restaurant with a margarita! Without the much needed break they provided me (not to mention the soothing powers of the 'rita), I probably would not have finished my research paper in such a spectacular fashion.

After such a high-stress couple of weeks, mother nature rewarded me with a SPECTACULAR SUNNY SPRING DAY! There was NO POSSIBLE WAY that I could be in a bad mood today. I took it easy and went to lunch with Jessie. After work, we went for a nice walk, where I introduced her to the "hippie-free" but still spectacularly pretty trails near the river. Nice, easy, walk through the forest. And, no hippies. (No offense to any ACTUAL hippies reading this post, we have not had good experiences with some of the local "hippies" recently.)

I guess SPECTACULAR is the "word of the day!" Should we all scream like they did on Pee Wee's Playhouse?

The week from hell that allowed me to say goodbye... (part 2)

So, we drove into Walsenburg around 9:30 on Thursday night, after traveling for about 14 hours to get there. We pulled in to the hotel. I thought it was a pretty good hotel on my many drive-by's on my way to my Grandma's house in the past, but I was wrong... Sure, it looks cute from the road, but it is just an "upscale" motel... Upscale because it looks cute from the road. We found a somewhat decent room, but it looked like the carpet hadn't been vacuumed in a while and there were many dead pill bugs on the floor in the bathroom... gross...

We were told that the hotel had high-performance internet, but I couldn't maintain a connection for longer than 10 minutes... So I wasn't able to submit my homework that night... bummer...

The next day was spent at my aunt's house. It was great seeing my brothers again. We haven't all been together in the same room since my wedding. It was crazy at my aunt's house, what with all the relatives congregating there before the memorial, so I wasn't able to use her computer to post my homework. I started working on some of my assignments in hopes that I could post later that night, but it was hard to stay focused.

That night, I tried again to get online... I couldn't even open my email. I tried to move to the lobby, where I assumed the wireless router was, but the signal didn't strengthen. I was allowed to use the computer in the lounge to send emails to my instructors to update them on why I wasn't posting anything. At that point, I figured that I wouldn't be able to do anything for school, so I decided to focus on enjoying the rest of my time in Colorado with my family... That's right, I blew off school work - sue me...

The week from hell that allowed me to say goodbye... (part 1)

In preparation for my grandmother's memorial, which required travel, I worked hellishly long hours at work, and then at home for school, with the hopes of getting ahead on my school work... No such luck...

Between work and school commitments, I didn't start packing until the morning we were supposed to leave for Colorado... The plus side is that due to a mechanical at work, Aaron was able to come home that day rather than have to take the red-eye to Seattle, with the hopes that we would meet there...

So, Aaron and I headed to the airport, with all our stuff needed for Colorado (including ALL of my school work)... By the grace of God, we both made it out on the same flight (although, he ALMOST got bumped in Ketchikan - thanks to the other 2 non-rev's that didn't want to travel seperately!). After running to catch our next flight, the day turned into a "hurry-up-and-wait" kind of day. Neither of us had slept more than a couple of hours the night before, so we were both wrecked on the flight.

I knew when I made the car rental reservation that the car counter was not in the terminal and we had to ride a bus to go get it, but I didn't realize it was SO FAR from the terminal... Holy cow, that was a long bus ride...

We were debating on staying the night in Denver and heading to see my family 3 hours away the next day... I got a bug up my butt and decided that we HAD to get there that night... On the plus side, we had really AWESOME customer service at Enterprise and got an amazing upgrade on our (economy) vehicle to a Luxury SUV for less that the additional rental for a GPS unit... The Luxury SUV had the GPS built in... Let me just say, that if I had $50K to spend on a car, I would so get that one! Maybe some day. I loved driving it. Other than the amount of time we spent in Denver traffic (poor planning had us arriving in Denver during rush-hour), I wasn't fatigued at all once we reached Walsenburg. Ok, well, that may be a lie - I was wrecked... But I wasn't as fatigued as I would have been if I had driven the economy car for an additional 3.5 hours...