Remembering Grandma Mary

I have been in the routine lately of posting on Thursdays.  However, we'll be gone all day tomorrow, so I will just post the most important thing today, and then hopefully I can catch up on Friday.  We had such a fun time celebrating Sammy's 9th birthday on Saturday, and I WILL post pictures about that next time. 

But for today Grandma Mary takes center stage.  I woke up Sunday morning to a text message from my step brother Roy that she had passed away peacefully at 2:45 am.  Her son Carl was there with her.  So this week has been filled with lots of communications and memories.  Tomorrow we'll be going to Lebanon County for the funeral service.  We feel apprehensive about a public service and will be deciding tomorrow what we feel safe and comfortable participating in.  Losing a loved one during COVID restrictions is really, really hard. This is our second round. 

Did I ever tell you how she and my dad met?  My mother had passed away from pancreatic cancer in 1981.  There was a young pastor named Lester Zimmerman that my dad had become acquainted with through ministry in Baltimore.  Lester's dad had passed away a few years prior, also from pancreatic cancer.  At some point Lester thought that his mom might enjoy meeting Paul Witmer.  So he arranged a chance for them to meet each other.  Of course interest was sparked!  They began "dating."  

About a month later Dick's dad and Arlene (who had been married less than a year) invited us and my dad and Mary to come to their place for dinner.  Afterward my dad showed slides of his recent trip to Israel.  Our Jeremy was three years old and a very friendly, affectionate little guy.  During the slides he wanted to sit next to Mary.  At some point he moved closer to her, looked up into her face and asked quietly, "Are you our new grandma?"   We have laughed over that memory so many times through the years!

So here is her obituary.  According to this there are 173 "Zimwits."  As most of you know, that is the name my hubby came up with after my dad died for the combined Zimmerman and Witmer families.  

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/schaefferstown-pa/mary-witmer-9379182?fbclid=IwAR2HzE7guwjjGa9_-J-aBR89Qh5aceRogYVezTgPgPYdFHiU1Tm_P8928W0

I have gone through so many pictures of happy times with her this week, but I don't have time today to post them.  I'd love to make a slide show at some point.  But here's one of my favorites from a few years ago.  Feeding people, especially her yummy cookies and pies, was her love language!

Fall, birthday, and babies

Here we are at Thursday evening again!  In last week's post I had mentioned our hazy skies from the forest fires out west.  However, by Friday we again had clear blue skies and white puffy clouds.   Out in Portland they were once again able to hang out on their big back porch and play in the yard.  They had gotten some rain, thank God!

On Friday evening we experienced a benefit of the pandemic.  There aren't too many of them, are there?  Because schools have to limit the number of fans at football games, the games are being live streamed.  So we were able to sit here at the computer and watch grandson J'von play football without driving to Lancaster!  His team won.  Because Dick is a diehard fan of the Manheim Central Barons (where our kids went to school) he also had their game on his iPad and was kind of watching two games at once!

Saturday was a beautiful day with a forecast of much cooler weather coming overnight.  So I sat on the front porch hanging onto summer with all my might!  I felt like there was nothing in my view that said anything other than summer.  And I loved it.  

I also enjoyed the view of our newly sealed driveway.  Dick had seen that someone down the street was getting their driveway sealed, so he went down to talk to the guy who was doing it.  A while later he came and did ours.  Then he was off to do someone else's up the street!  He said he's been busy in our community the past few weeks just from people seeing what he's doing and then hiring him to do theirs!  Over winter he lives in Florida and does the same thing!  Smart way to earn a living!

In the mail I got this book I had ordered, so I took advantage of- my porch-sitting and started reading.  First I cried when Jenna talked about having lost three of her grandparents in a little over a year.  (If you read my previous post you know that we will be losing Grandma Mary any day now, and we just lost Dick's dad in April. )  But it wasn't long until I was cracking up at Jenna's funny stories.  (I was afraid the neighbors would wonder why I was sitting on the porch by myself laughing so loud!)  One example was her description of the differences since childhood between herself and her twin sister Barbara.  She said she herself loved playing with Barbie dolls since she was very young.  In fact, she would get up early before school in order to have time to play with them.  She would even take them along to the bathroom and play with them while she was on the toilet!  At some point her dad got a pink sign that said "Barbie" that he would hang on the outside of the bathroom door when she was in there.  She said she had time to go through whole episodes of a soap opera with those Barbies while she was in the bathroom, hahaha!  Great book!  I love the Bush family so much.

 

It got COLD Saturday night!  We brought our porch plants inside.  On Sunday morning we were setting up for our outdoor service in 42 degrees!  I had my winter booties on my feet, a winter coat, gloves, hand warmers in my coat pockets to keep my fingers warmed up between songs!  Thankfully, it was a sunny day, and the temp gradually rose throughout the worship service. 

Sunday was also Anthony's 44th birthday.  What wonderful memories we have of the day he was born!  I did not want to go to the hospital, and our family doctor had started delivering babies at his office, so we just drove a few miles to his office in Manheim that morning, I gave birth to an 8 lb 12 oz  baby boy, and an hour-and-a-half later we walked out and went home.  Hahahaha!!  I told you I believed in natural everything!  

On Sunday we went over to their place to say Happy Birthday in person and got this cute family picture of them.  Lori didn't want her slippers to be on the picture.  She hid them so successfully that when Anthony posted this picture on his business FB page, someone asked where his wife's legs were.   Tooo funny!!

I loved how the sun was shining on the trees when we were leaving. 

The next two nights were really cold again, and we got frost.  When I thought about my coleus in the back, I went out to see how they had fared, and this is what I found.  I was SO SAD!!! 

I was really missing that sweet baby boy down in Lancaster, so when I found out that Destiny had to take him to an appointment on Tuesday afternoon and hadn't yet figured out transportation, I decided to go down.  It was a beautiful day for driving, and we had fun being together as we always do.  Aren't they the cutest?   She said this picture was taken on her birthday.  

She sends me pictures almost every day.  Here's a collage of some of them.  His face and arms are filling out.  Isn't he darling???

Warmer weather has again returned.  So this morning I finally got to sit out on the side porch.  The view has changed!!  It's like the tree is saying, "I know you're sad about the frost killing your coleus, but look what it did to me!"

This evening I walked around the house to see who survived the frost.  The sunflowers did not.  They are wilted and discolored.  The rose bushes are still green, but there are no blooms on them.  But the good old marigolds are still blooming away!  

And the hosta were not affected by the frost.  But that's about it.  It feels really sad after a summer of enjoying my flowers more than I have ever had the time to do before.  

Have a good rest of the week!

Pray for Grandma Mary

 Please pray for my stepmother, Grandma Mary.  You may remember that two weeks ago we visited her in the gazebo outside the Richland Christian Home where she lives.  I mentioned that she was not feeling well.  Actually she had a scratchy voice and a bit of a cough.  She said it came from sleeping with her fan on the night before.  She was also not her jolly self.  Often she could not finish things she started to say because she couldn't remember what she was going to say.  For the first time ever I had a hard time thinking what else to talk about with her because conversation seemed so hard.  She mentioned that it had gotten so hot again, but it really wasn't hot at all.  It was a very pleasant day.  When the care girl came to get her at the end of the visit I mentioned her cough and what she had said it came from.  The girl said,  "I was the one that turned the fan on for you, and I was wondering about that because you never want it on." Mary said, "But it was so hot last night."  

I had a bad feeling when we left that visit.  I wondered if she perhaps had a fever.  The next day was her 93rd birthday, and her sons were planning to be there for cake and a little party under the carport.  However, she woke up feeling much worse, and the birthday celebration was called off.  Several others at the home were sick also that day.  All four of them were tested for COVID.  (For the record, the home has done an excellent job of mitigation and keeping the virus out of the facility.)  As the week progressed Mary's health continued to fail more and more.  By the end of that week (last Sunday) her COVID results came back positive.  

At that point her sons were given permission to be in her room with her, of course with full personal protective gear on, since she was not allowed out of her room.   This picture was taken on Sunday, September 13 when she had the first visit in her room with her son Roy.  She was so happy!  

When we saw that picture it seemed hard to imagine that she would not bounce back.  However, in this past week she has declined so rapidly. Her sons have put Hospice in charge of her care and they are taking turns being with her.  She is not awake and aware for the most part, but she often says, "Please take me, please take me."  Her son Roy keeps me updated so I can keep our Witmer family updated.  This morning he called me to give the update.  He told me that this morning she was reaching out and calling to my dad and to her brother (who just passed away in April) and to her mother.  Roy and I cried together.  

It feels so very sad, knowing how she cared so lovingly for my dad to the very end 11 years ago, and now we can't be there for her.  Bless her dear sons.  This is so very, very sad.

Of course, when Dick and I heard that she had tested positive we thought a good bit about our visit with her.  We both had masks on the entire visit, although she did not.  We did not touch her at all, and we were a good distance apart.  We had not had any symptoms, but to be cautious we decided to get tested.  Dick took a few vacation days last week, and we did not go anywhere until we got the phone calls that we were negative.  

Although it is so hard to imagine never again being with her and laughing with her, our cry truly is that Jesus would answer her cries and take her home quickly.

Hazy days, good friends, handsome little men

What strange weather we've had this week!  Very little need for the AC because our temps have probably not hit the 80's at all.  And the sky is so hazy, which they say is the result of the smoke from the wild fires having traveled across the country.  Jeremy and I were talking on the phone last evening about it.  Because of COVID we can't travel to see them and they can't travel to see us, but the smoke can travel anyway.  I told him I'll just look up at the sky and say, "Awww, were you just at Jeremy's house?"  Pathetic indeed.  That's how bad our humor is these days.  

Here's a picture I took last evening of the sky. 

I found a new autumn swag for my front door at TJ Maxx the other day and couldn't wait to hang it up.  But I noticed when I got into the car yesterday that it doesn't exactly sync with the summer flowers.  I'll get pumpkins and mums one of these days.

Last Thursday evening we had an outdoor meeting at GBRV to discuss the next step.  We've had 13 Sundays in a row with good weather for an outdoor service!  But we know much cooler weather is coming.  At this point we are planning to have our first indoor service the first Sunday of October.  It takes a LOT of planning to keep within COVID guidelines.  However Dick and I will not miss the work of setting up each Sunday!  

On Friday I drove to Manheim for a very special reunion at my friend Sheree's house.  Back in April when I was cleaning out old photos I found some great ones of our times together as young moms.  I sent them to a few that I have as FB friends, and out of that the idea for a reunion was born.   Of course at that time we thought September would be a good time for it - after COVID was out of the picture.  HA!   So of course we had it outside on Sheree's lovely, spacious deck.  How FUN it was!!  

When we were young moms we all belonged to LaLeche League, which was a breastfeeding support group.  But it was much more than that.  An older, conservative Mennonite woman (Grace) was our mentor in all things pertaining to mothering and life in general.  We believed in natural everything - natural childbirth (at home if possible), natural food, natural baby-feeding.  We were CRUNCHY GRANOLA all the way!  Getting back together after all these years was beyond words.  Even Grace, who is now in her 80's, was there!  It was like no time had passed at all, even though it's been over 30 years!  We had so much fun reminiscing and laughing and catching up on each others' lives and children and grandchildren.  We decided we absolutely must do this again, and Sheree's lovely deck was so perfect, we all want to do it there again next year.  Quite a few people were unable to come, so maybe they will come if we do it again.  

I also had an impromptu get-together with my sisters at Mary Ellen's house.  We first of all sat on her patio, but after a while the bees were flying all around us.  We were afraid we would swallow one with our coffee, so we had to go inside.  She has such beautiful flowers in the back yard of her townhouse.  

On Sunday afternoon we went to the 20th anniversary party for our friends Peg and Bill.  It was raining a bit, so there were canopies set up, and we brought our little one along too.  Their favorite band, Biscuit Jam, was providing music and a caterer had food.  It was a really nice, laid back afternoon.

Of all things, I did not even get one picture of Peg and Bill, so here's one I took in August when we stopped in to get some of their tomatoes.  Love them so much!  They've been good friends to us ever since we landed in this community ten years ago. 

Dick has been spending time at his hunting shack whenever he gets a chance.  His latest project was painting it to look camouflaged!  He also likes to do target practice with his bow and arrow.  

Look at this!  A post on FB about Sound of Music this week reminded me of this book that I read to our children years ago.  I looked on our shelves and was delighted that I still have it.  To my complete surprise, when I opened it, there was Maria Trapp's autograph!  I have absolutely no idea where I ever got this book!  I'm definitely not getting rid of it now!

How about this handsome boy??  It was picture day this week at school and this is the outfit he chose!  Third grade business man, haha!  I love him so much!!

And of course I need to post pictures of precious Elizer!  Destiny sends me pictures almost every day.  I could just sit and look at him for hours!  He's four weeks old already!

Only one flower picture this week!  As I said before, I am so delighted with the variety of sunflowers from one pack of seeds!

Have a good rest of the week!

Labor Day weekend visits

I'm feeling busy again - even though there are quite a number of things that are not happening as normal. I'm starting to wonder how I used to do it all.  

I'll start off with more flower pictures.  I'm sorry if you get tired of them, but it's hard for me to look at beautiful things without taking pictures of them!  Mainly this week it has been my sunflowers and coleus.  The roses have taken a bit of a break it seems.  

This begonia is planted by the coleus, but it seems straggly to me. I do love the bright red.

I just love these colors!!

Dick and I had a really good Labor Day weekend.  We had a lovely visit with Dick's stepmother, Grandma Arlene.  When we arrived, the porch where we normally visit her seemed hot, so we found a different spot in the shade.  It was so beautiful!  She said she had never sat there before, but I think she will after this!

There were such lovely hanging plants.

I had never seen her in that red dress before, and I thought she looked so beautiful.

I thought her male visitor looked quite handsome, for that matter!

We also visited with my stepmother, Grandma Mary.  They allowed us to visit in the gazebo!  Unfortunately she was not feeling well, so it was not as fun as our visits with her usually are, but sweet nonetheless.   She had her 93rd birthday this week!

We also had a chance to finally catch up with our youngest son Ray for the first time since March!    It was really, really good to be together. 

We took Destiny and baby Elizer to our beloved Long's Park in Lancaster.  Alex had to go to work, so he wasn't with us.  I had a picnic lunch along.

Destiny and I walked around the lake while Dick took a nap in the van.

So beautiful!  And the weather couldn't have been more perfect!

We found a bench in the shade along the lake and just enjoyed watching the animals.  

We were listening to an ice cream truck making its rounds, and when it showed up on our side of the lake, we were ready.  Dick woke up from his nap and had a cone too.

Melt my heart!

And of course that precious boy was the main attraction!  

I could just eat him up!  He's such a content little guy.  Here's another cute one Destiny sent me this week.   He looks like he's about to say something!

I'll close again with a sunrise picture from yesterday morning.  

It's becoming so noticeable that the days are getting shorter.  I'm trying really hard to accept that reality, but I'm struggling.  I could easily cry at the thought of winter days.  Maybe I should ask Dick if he could turn this porch into a "she shed" with heat, so I could still sit and watch my mountains, haha!

Have a good rest of the week!