Worked on the irrigation pump and the trim around the garage door on the boat house today. A couple trips to town for parts etc. Jake, Holly, Landen and Reed came and spent the afternoon with us - was nice - Jake and Sari helped me put the seal trim and seal around the door. We had a great supper - taco's - the hot sauce mom and I made was a lot cooler after I used a spoon and picked the habanero's out I had smashed up and put in, seeds and all, a couple of days ago. I ate quite bit of it the other day and couldn't taste for a few hours.
They left this evening and we are getting to keep Landen here for the night, we will be home tomorrow. I took a shower and lay on the hammock eating peanuts in the shell and drinking diet pop as I read a book. Kimber came and began begging and She and I ate peanuts for quite a while before Saundra took her in. The next thing I know Saundra, Landen and Kimber came back from Sari's trailer and Landen proceeded to tell me Kimber had caught a mouse in the brush, up by Sari's and she had it in her mouth and them dropped it near Sari's trailer. It was about dead so they put it in the wood pile.
As I lay there in the hammock, my thoughts went back to the years past and this place. I remember we bought out first hammock not long after we made the lawn up the hill. We had it in one of the lower small lawns. I used to lay in it and watch the trees sway above me, that is what I had been doing tonight which brought back the past. I then began thinking of all the work we had done on the lawns, thinning and taking out trees, moving rocks, a couple of big ones took Saundra, the kids and I a whole day to move. I taught them about levers and used 3 or 4 poles along with a couple of bars to move the bigger of the rocks around. The biggest was about 3 1/2 by 3 1/2 by 4. It was heavy and we managed to move it from the middle of what became the upper lawn to the edge where it became part of the rock wall probably 15 feet away. it was a chore, but fun to show the kids how we could move that heavy thing. Then I thought about the day I cut three big trees down, each of which were leaning over the old trailer and when the wind blew it looked like they might fall on it. We pulled the trailer forward about 8 feet and fell all 3 trees. It was a full days work for all of us, Ike and Terese Landon, G & G Hughes and G & G Little, to clean up all the limbs and cut the trees into pieces small enough to move (to big for our current stove) they sat for several years stacked between and behind two trees above the road and then back up the hill, it was a good sized wood pile. Just a year ago Saundra and I worked on the pile until we cut all the pieces in two that were not rotten and either put them in the wood shed or burned them in the stove, the rotten ones we burned in the fire pit and down the hill on the road by the old cabin. The last of it was being cut and split the afternoon before Abby was run over, she chased a couple of deer that afternoon between the old trailer and Sari's, up over the hill above us as we worked. Then as I lay I thought of the old trail that came from our trailer to the lake and it crossed not far from where I now lay on the patio, through thick trees and down to the dock. I remember when I first started thinning trees by the lake - at first Saundra didn't like it - she loved that old trail (it was nice, green & peaceful). Then I thought of the first idea of a boat house to pull the boat up into and the further thinning and then removing the stumps and finally beginning to dig the basement and footing out by hand with shovels and a pick, slow work and little progress, finally helped with a borrowed backhoe from Stephen at the end of one of his jobs and then from a backhoe borrowed from Larry Palmer. Lot's of rocks and finally the solid ones which extend from the hill down under the ground, causing the final location of the boathouse/cabin to be where it currently sits. My mind wandered through the years with all the building, the scaffolding we had all around the building for a couple of years, adding the bathroom end one and the nail gun incident. The saw was sitting right where I lay and the scaffolding was up between there and the building, I remember trying to get dad's attention as he was sawing 2 x 6's for spacers for me and I finally dropped the tools down on the air hose and he looked up to see all the blood. I had to settle him down after I got off the roof and we gathered things up and headed for town. What the mind can remember as one lays and watches the trees swaying above. I wouldn't trade all those memories for anything. The kids helping haul water from the road with the trailer, a barrel, buckets and a a hose that we siphoned water out of the barrel to the lawn. Even further back - the day I cut the paddle lock off of the old gate about twenty feet from where I lay - once our offer had been accepted. "Time flies on wings of lightening" there is no stopping, slowing or changing it.
Tonight Sari talked to Bonnie, mom has not eaten for a couple of days and not gone to the bathroom for several days. Looks like it is a good thing we are going home tomorrow - who knows what is coming, sad enough, maybe relief enough, but difficult for all none the less. In this process as mom fades from mortality as her heart slows to a stand still. The process of birth into another life, one free of pain, sorrow, trials and difficulty. One where she will close her eyes here, to open them to her mom and dad, brothers and sisters, other relatives and friends. One where goodbye seems so hard for us all, such longing and seemingly endless as to time, yet so quick in the Eternal scheme of it all. One where she says hello to those who have proceeded through this veil of mortality to immortality. And all the while we have just watched another of our grandchildren come into this world just last month while another stands at the door waiting to see the likes of Portland. Who knows if these youngsters of ours conversed about their coming with one another and yet other unborn brothers, sisters, cousins, maybe even children of their own to be. How difficult might it have seemed as they said their goodbyes from one existence, the one of premortality to this one. Yet how exciting knowing that this step was so essential and so rewarding with a mortal body that they could learn to control and use, to move and to function with. So it is goodbye and hello, it is the way of mortality from Adam and Eve to the present and will be the way until this world completes its mortal existence and then also passes on to become a Celestial World filled with resurrected beings who have lived upon it and have earned a just reward to continue as families forever. So the goodbyes are just as essential as the hellos, if we but could see - I am sure they are just as exciting if maybe not more so.
Well, I have gotten into my inner feelings here, but I know that these things are true, that we didn't start here nor do we end here. My deepest longings are for the Eternal nature of the family, for the best of the relationships we could ever have had to be but the beginning of the glorious future. I also long to have a greater understanding of it all, the plan, the Atonement, the past and the future. The history of the world, and even more importantly the history of all creation, and the future of it all, to see it, to understand it, not as a mortal who could not understand it, but as a resurrected, glorious being capable of that understanding. To hold my Saundra, my children and their families, and future posterity in my arms with love and with the perfection of that affection which I already feel for them. To likewise be held by my parents and ancestors past, and above it all to be held and bonded with God the Father and His Only Begotten in the flesh and the Heavenly family from whom we all descend. All this makes any trials and difficulties we encounter here in this life seem of very little significance. So as it is "Time Marches On", but it is good to keep in mind that time is only relative as to mortality.
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