May 27 2012
Updates
Megan and I had a good time on her birthday evening. We ended up talking and listening to music instead of watching the movie. She loved her present, a garden bench/kneeler:
Having repeated knee surgeries makes groveling around to weed and garden pretty painful, and when you have an 80 foot by 80 foot garden, that can be a problem. I still owe you a post about the garden on the property, but in the meantime, here’s what it looked like after a neighbor and his big machine tore up the existing scrubby huckleberry bushes:
And here it is after months more of hard work:
It turns out that Rob gave her a pair of Felco pruners for her birthday before he left, and they will fit nicely in the pockets of the bench, along with things like sunscreen (for Megan and Star) and her sun hat when she’s not wearing it.
Rob’s mother is not expected to survive much longer. She is in palliative care, so we all hope she is comfortable. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to be able to communicate and is sleeping a lot. I hope that she knows her children are with her, even if she can’t express it. They say that people often hear and experience more than they can say in these kinds of circumstances.
If there is a bright side, it’s that Rob is with his siblings and they are supportive of each other and glad to be together. We are all lucky to have our families, both in good times and bad.