You have to come
Sunday February 16th 2014, 10:10 pm
Filed under: Family,Life

I rebooted my phone today, thinking, well, that’s at least one thing I can do. Wasn’t expecting anything–but then when I typed out a name and phone number I knew and hit go, all the sudden my whole contact list came back to life. I have no idea why on earth it had disappeared but I’ll sure be asking questions. What a relief, though.

Meantime, a story I wanted to tell last night but for the late hour:

About fifteen summers ago, my sister who then lived in Texas (and North Carolina before that) told me she and her family had a work-related reason to drive to Salt Lake City for about a week, y’know, just in case we wanted to meet up with them.

My younger kids had never met her nor her family. My older kids didn’t remember them. Every time we had had specific reasons to get together over the years something had gotten in the way, and I did not want to let that happen again.

This was well before my parents retired there, and I ended up calling my Aunt Bonnie and Uncle David. Carolyn and family would be staying with her in-laws; Aunt Bonnie and Uncle David offered us to stay at their house for I think it was five days. They wanted to see us and they wanted to make sure we wouldn’t miss our chance for the cousins to get to finally meet each other. Come!

After a long hard day’s drive, we arrived to find Aunt Bonnie on crutches. Wait, what on earth happened to you?!

She had broken her hip a few weeks earlier. She had quite deliberately not told us because she knew we wouldn’t come if she did, and a hotel for six for that long was out of our range. It was that important to her and Uncle David that their nieces get their families together that they simply kept quiet.

Uncle David was the one who made up all the beds upstairs and prepared the rooms, there being no way she could. We would have done at least that much ourselves and spared them, had we had any idea, but they just waved any concern away and welcomed us warmly.

I will forever be grateful for their uncommon kindnesses. We all will.

My cousin John took his parents in a few years ago to take care of them as his dad’s Parkinson’s progressed.

Talking to him today, he had never heard that story about his folks. He told me that he’d been fielding call after call for two days of people wanting him to know what his dad had done for them and how grateful they were.

I could just picture John getting off the phone and asking his mom to tell him about that time when… She’s earned every moment of it. And so has John.

I did not know as I was planting my Comice pear tree on Friday with Richard’s help that the day’s news would make it into a memorial to my uncle, but now it will forever be so as it grows and thrives and bears the most perfect fruit in great quantity, to be offered freely to all.

(Ed. to add, Hudson started walking today!)


5 Comments so far
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That story is typical of them both. Until we had married children in Provo with enough room to have us, every trip to Salt Lake to meet up with the folks in summers, we stayed with them. They were my home when I was lonesome while at the U of U.

Comment by Marian 02.17.14 @ 1:01 am

Family–that is what it is all about.

Comment by Sherry in Idaho 02.17.14 @ 8:49 am

Goodbye to your Uncle, and hello to the walking Hudson. Circle of life, so dear.

Comment by DebbieR 02.17.14 @ 6:56 pm

Too funny; while I was opening your blog in my browser, Loretta Lynn was singing “Y’all Come!”

And that song always reminds me of family, because the Knight and I each have a couple of relations who say, “Come see me!” when we end a phone conversation.

Comment by Channon 02.17.14 @ 7:08 pm

How on earth can Hudson be walking when I swear he was just born yesterday? I refuse to believe it!

Comment by twinsetellen 02.24.14 @ 9:06 pm



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