Thanksgiving Blessing

 We were invited to Loren's for Thanksgiving this year, but that all fell apart real quick. All of the family, including Shule's family, were going to be there. But then we got word that Stephen's dad's health has dramatically declined. He hadn't been feeling well for a couple weeks and it was just discovered that he had a urinary tract infection that was really bad. His nurses brought pamphlets to the house on end of life procedures, and no one saw it coming. Dave had lost a lot of weight and the infection could kill him. We were told he had anywhere from a couple weeks to a few months left to live, and that we should go visit him as soon as we could. So that's what we did the day before Thanksgiving. We took the kids to visit Grandma and Grandpa Washburn. Zander wore his favorite football jersey because he new it was Grandpa's favorite team and he wanted to show it to him. That melted my heart when Zander told he wanted to wear it for Grandpa. 

We had to wear our masks as we visited. Zander stayed with us the whole time while his siblings played in the basement. Dave could hardly talk, and what he did say was just barely a whisper and really hard to understand. He was tired, so we mostly talked with Pat in the room, but tried to include Grandpa. We took a family picture with him. We didn't know if he would come back from the infection or not, and by the look and sound of things we were just waiting for that phone call. 

 The next day, on Thanksgiving day, Miriam took dinner to Pat and Dave, and let the rest of the family know that Grandpa wasn't looking good, and that this could be it. All the siblings gather at the house the following day (minus Shule because Oregon shut down again, so he couldn't leave the state) and Loren and Stephen were asked to give Dave a blessing. surprisingly Dave was looking and sounding a lot better than the previous day. Rachel commented at how good he was looking that night, and Dave replied, "Is that code for you're surprised I'm not dead yet?" It was good to hear he still has his witty sense of humor. 

Since then, Grandpa has been getting better and better. It's kind of a roller coaster with good days and bad days, but he's still hanging in there eating, sitting up, and wanting to watch tv, so we are really grateful that he's feeling better and that he's still here with us.