May 13 2008

We had news that my Aunt Barbara was very sick. When I was a teenager I lived in Alaska with my Aunt Barbara and she became a second mother to me. With Tyrell's baptism on Saturday and our general "no traveling on Sunday" policy we decided to delay the trip to Spokane until Monday. With all of the commotion surrounding Ty's baptism and everything else we still had several left over errands to get ready for the trip left Monday morning and hence were not able to leave until around 2 o'clock in the afternoon which is not exactly a good starting time for a trip from Pocatello Idaho to Spokane Washington. It was very important to me that my mom (Barbara's only sibling) and my grandma (Barbara's mother) be able to see Barbara. It was decided that Lexie and the two oldest boy's Tyrell and Dallin would stay in Pocatello to free up room for 'the grandmas' as we call them. Leaving Lexie with just the two oldest boys also promised some good opportunity for some focused school work. My sister Mary also came north to Spokane.

It turned out to be the most convenient to have Mary drive. Mary and I differ in driving philosophy. I like to end my driving around 6 or 8 in the evening if that late. Mary like to get where she is going. At 10PM I was more than ready to stop for the night and Mary was ready to finish the drive to Spokane. In the circumstance I gave the nod to Mary to keep driving in that the traffic seemed reasonable, the roads seemed clear and I am generally not a fan of big fights over little things. We had shuffled to arrange that my grandma was able to be in the back seat by herself so she could lay down and sleep. I sat between Natalyn and David in the middle where I was able to stretch my feet through the center and have a great view from which to carry out the ever important duty of back seat driving and my Mom was in the from passenger seat. I did my best to stay awake to help keep Mary awake but on the way into Couer d' Alene collapsed into about a 20 minute sleep. At about 2:00AM we pulled into the Post Falls rest area. We were asleep by 2:30 and then I was back awake at 6:00 AM my normal time to wake. This of course was 7:00 AM in the new time zone.

My cousin Mariann who had been anticipating our arrival was very pleased to hear of our progress. We arranged that it would be simplest to go to Mariann's house about 30 minutes north of Spokane, drop the trailer and then return to the hospital with my cousin Laura who was down from Juneau at her sister Mariann's house. The hospital is in downtown Spokane without a good place to have a trailer. We ate a quick breakfast and then once we got moving immediately found a gas station because the night's travel had all but exhausted the fuel supply. At the gas station we got another call from Mariann with very bad news. She told us to go directly to the hospital. Barbara's condition had deteriorated to the point that it had been decided to discontinue her treatments which meant that by the afternoon she would not be able to communicate with anyone. When we relayed the news to my four year old Natalyn that we would not be starting the trip from Mariann's farm (which she was very much looking forward to seeing) but would be starting at the hospital Natalyn protested in a slight cry "THAT IS NOT FAIR FOR ME!". I assured her that we all felt exactly the same way.

We called the hospital to find out if there was somewhere close by we could park the trailer and to get directions in. The security guard told us to come to the emergency entrance and also gave us directions of how to find the hospital. Upon arriving in Spokane we were confused that the first "left" in the security officer's directions would take us the wrong way down a one way street. After a quick call to Mariann and some looking around we figured out where the hospital was and were able to get to it. In the end it turned out if we replaced all of the "lefts" in the security guards instructions with "rights" they were indeed very good directions. Everyone but Mary unloaded at the emergency exit and then we left Mary with the very unpleasant task of finding some where to park 45 feet of vehicle (including the suburban and trailer) in downtown Spokane. Somehow on the way out of the car my grandma managed to get two reasonably large cuts on her leg. They weren't gushing blood but still were producing a small flow. I did my best to get the leg patched on our way up the elevator. By the eleventh floor I had the bandages in place.

Seeing Barbara was very difficult in that she was much more sick than I had realized. She wasn't able to say much but it was very obvious that she was pleased to see me, her sister and her mother. As much as I would have liked to have a picture of my aunt, mother and grandmother together I decided that reverence dictated that I only hold the picture in my mind.

Mary was able to find two parking meters in a row and feed both as a way to take care of the Suburban and trailer. The metered parking had a 3 hour time limit on it. After we had exhausted the time we were allowed to use the parking meter a group of us took the task of moving the trailer to Mariann's house in Nine Mile Falls about 30 minutes north. Mary was still driving and Mariann was giving directions, sort of. While Mary was driving Mariann was on the phone working to arrange for her brother John to be able to come down from Ketchican. Every now and then we would interrupt Mariann to ask something like "Mariann there is a light coming up. What should we do?". Mariann would glance up and say "Oh go left". After missing a few intersections, doing some extra touring of Spokane and giving Mary some great experience driving a trailer in city traffic we eventually cleared Spokane and were able to get on the road to Nine Mile Falls.

When we got back to the hospital Barbara was sleeping. At this point things were getting clear that she would not be with us much longer. Mariann called and was able to make arrangements to get John on an earlier connection between Seattle and Spokane. We picked up John from the air port around 6:00 PM and were able to get John back just before Barbara passed on. We had the feeling that Barbara had been waiting for John before she said goodbye.

I don't really feel up to describing all of my feelings but I will say that it was extremely difficult.

Mary wanted to get back to Utah by Friday afternoon so she could see her kids. After several circular discussions and a generous offer from my brother-in-law Camron it was finally decided my dad would come up with Lexie and the boys and Mary would fly back to Utah On the other end my mom and grandma would return to Idaho with my dad and my Family would be free to do what ever we wanted. Incidentally I really like the state of being free to do what ever I want.

Mariann was in the thick of a week long animal fair which her two oldest daughters Kylie and Sabrina were involved. Even though the other people in her 4H club were very gracious about helping Mariann, Mariann was still feeling a lot of stress and guilt about being so disconnected and uninvolved in such a big show. On mornings of the show Mariann wakes at about 4:30 to get things ready. To be honest I started the experience very uncertain of why anyone would spend as much time on something as Mariann was on the show but by the end of the shows I was able to see why someone might spend about 25% of the time on a show and extrapolated that someone starting from there could easily develop into putting as much effort as Mariann did into an animal show.

I was extremely impressed with the way Mariann's girls handled the barn chores. I was also pleased with my daughter Natalyn who went with us. She spent at least an hour diligently sweeping up dirt messes around the barn.

On Thursday we had a memorial service for Barbara. Everyone I talked to about the memorial agreed that it was a very fitting way to honor Barbara. Mariann's husband Jarod arranged a place in the day use area of River Side State Park. We had a canvas tent setup covering a laptop which had slide shows covering parts of Barbara's life. At one point there was so much rain that everyone at the memorial huddled under the tent. I gave a talk at the memorial that I will be happy to share with people who request it of me but I will not share it here.

Friday was the last showing day of the animal show but the most trying for a parent in that the Friday competitions did not judge the animals but rather how well the kids presented the animals. I think I had more fun watching Mariann than the show as she nervously watched on the side line.

Saturday was a slow day. I was happy to be able to get out and shoot a couple of arrows with Jarod. I haven't shot a bow since I was in boy scouts. I remember really liking it then and I still really like it now. I wasn't able to do a lot of shooting because we didn't have much time and we figured out that we didn't really have the right equipment in as much as I am left eye dominant and as such need a left handed bow. I was pleased to find that I could pull back Jarod's 68 pound bow. I was not so pleased to get a kinesthetic lesson in why it is import not to bend one's wrist in while holding a bow. I have been disappointed at how little bruising I have developed for the amount of pain on my elbow. I really really want to get a bow now but am fighting the desire in as much as I think that kind of desire works against what I am trying to accomplish in the trailer life. At least for now it does. Even with my limited space in the trailer I have several disc golf disks. Those disks have not found their way out of the cup board once this entire trip. It is easy to focus on what one doesn't have and forget what one does have.

On Sunday we went to church. We were very impressed with the support everyone in the ward were giving the Crooks. Lexie described the ward as by far the most chatty ward that we had attended. She said it seemed like people were continually stopping her to talk.

I decided to stretch my time off and spend Monday with my cousin Mariann. We went to go get hay for her animals. There is a hay shortage right now. The prices are way up and the farmers are only willing to sell limited quantities. I was very impressed with the farmer he seemed to really like farming. He made me think that it might be a lot of fun to be a farmer. At the animal show I learned that goat meat (chevon) was lower in saturated fat than chicken and higher in protein that beef. Mariann didn't have any goats that were ready to butcher. I kept going back and forth about whether or not I wanted to go to the animal auction and pick up a goat to butcher so that I could try goat meat. Looking online the online distributors wanted around $13 a pound plus shipping and handling for goat meat and I could find any local suppliers. At the auction it was expected that the goats would be selling for around $1 a pound live weight. The main problems that were keeping me from being certain I wanted to buy a goat for butchering were, goats are cute, I am very squeamish about blood, and the butchering process was expected to take an entire day. Even with all of those concerns my curiosity was dominating and I found it easy to talk Mariann into going into the animal auction.

Arriving us an old man greeted us and exclaimed, "you must be rich, you have hay!". At the auction we only found one goat in the pens that looked like it was the right size. Mariann was amused to find it was a goat that had been on her farm only a few weeks earlier. In contrast to the animal show which was an acquired taste the animal auction was a ton of fun from the gate. Mariann bought me a hot dog for lunch which made the experience all the better. After figuring out that the auctioneer left the 'tens' place off of a lot of the numbers he was calling I was able to follow most of the action. There are few experiences as exciting as having an item you want to buy on an auction block. When our goat finally came up I was in a state which I had to remind myself to breathe. Even though we had set our buy limit at $1 per pound we decided not to bid when the price got to $50 on the 60 pound goat. It just seemed a lot simpler to not put an extra chore on ourselves. We stayed long enough to see the horses go through. I was shocked to see a nice 2 year old horse go through for $10. After seeing the worst cows go for 40 cents a pound it seemed extremely unbalanced to see a good horse sold for $10. I guess that says a lot about the hay shortage. It is my understanding that it is illegal in the United States to kill a horse for human consumption. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I can understand that people value them as pets and can get emotionally attached to the animals. On the other hand they are animals and it seems as right to eat them as any other barn animal. I also know from first hand experience in Belgium horse is very taste!

The evening was spent helping Kim get some windows loaded which he will be taking to Alaska. Kim spent a lot of time figuring out how to haul the windows and I believe he came up with a good solution.