The trailer in Weslaco
Inside the renovated trailer
Graham and Marsha were living in Austin and they visited each other frequently in Weslaco and Austin; spending Christmases and Thanksgiving together. They traveled together to Mexico. Marsha and Mom became very close friends who enjoyed each other’s company very much. On trips they spent many hours laughing and talking in the back seat of the car. Dad used to call it nattering in the back.
Marsha says in Weslaco Mum used to take a daily walk around the grounds and the neighbors would ask where she was going so fast and comment on her stride. She'd come home and prepare lunch for Dad to send him off to his bridge game for which he won a plaque one year. They both would go swimming every afternoon. They loved to eat at their favorite all you can eat Chinese Buffet in town.
When Graham and Marsha came to visit they always went to Safeway where they had befriended the fish monger and he would always save them some choice pieces of fresh fish. Then Dad would crank up the grill and stir fry the veggies. They insisted that Marsha season the fish with Marsha Mix which was just whatever she happened to throw together but they thought it was a special recipe so Dad insisted that she make it.
One day would always be devoted to shopping for Mum's kitch in Progresso Mexico. Dad hated that but they would temper the ordeal with margaritas and nachos at this little place at the end of town where all the snow birds hung out.
They had a very active lifestyle there and enjoyed good health in the sun. They had several friends down there and had a great garden with grapefruit size lemon trees. Marsha and Graham loved visiting them and having Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners there although Marsha nearly choked Dad one night cooking turkey stock which he doesn't like and letting it simmer for hours through the living room where they slept when Graham and Marsha were there.
Marsha and Graham went to visit one Thanksgiving, and contracted Howard Hall, and Howard bought the materials and built a deck for them as a surprise when they went back at Christmas time. Marsha and Graham bought them the swing shown above, and drove it to Wesalco in pieces in their car. I gather it was a rather uncomfortable ride among the hard metal pieces of swing.
Beginning in the Dominican Republic and continuing in Texas with Graham and Marsha’s assistance they began cooking and eating in a different more healthy way. Mom had to change her eating patterns because of her diabetes, so they ate less rich and fatty foods. Mom stopped making the rich sauces and things, and they made more stir fries and vegetables and used different spices. They learned to love Cilantro in the Dominican Republic, and grew it in Rock Glen. They even learned to love garlic!
I remember being quite shocked to see them using garlic cloves, and the house smelling of it. While I was younger, they had refused to eat it, and claimed to hate it. (We had always been amused when in a restaurant they would be brought a dish reeking of garlic and eat it all up).
While living in Bienfait, Mom had been a regular viewer of a daytime TV show called “The Galloping Gourmet”. The chef was a character named Graeme Kerr, who used a lot of wine and was really quite funny. Mom had tried for months to get Dad to watch it. Well, one day Dad sat down to watch the show. Darned if the fellow didn’t proceed to take a leg of lamb and smother it in garlic! Dad was horrified. Sacrilege!
Mom tells the story of travelling in Mexico and overhearing some Mexicans speaking rather derogatory remarks in Spanish. Mom turned and spoke to them in Spanish to show she could understand them.
In Monterray
They purchased a huge boat of a Cadillac and drove back and forth between Weslaco and Rock Glen every spring and fall. They avoided the larger cities and freeways. They learned how to accommodate the need for proper morning tea with a kettle, and purchasing milk in small containers and keeping it fresh in the ice bucket in the motel.
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The Cadillac. Mom never liked this car she thought it was too big.
Graham and Marsha tell the story of once Mom was driving this car, which she did not like to do. She was weaving all over the road because she could not comfortably control the car. She was pulled over by a police officer, who had her undergo a Breathalyzer test because he thought she was driving drunk!
Rock Glen
I began taking Sarah and Cameron and Michael to Rock Glen every summer to spend some time with the grandparents and cousins. Michael remembers visiting Grandma for the endless supply of Revellos in the freezer. Sarah went downtown one day and came back to declare "There's nothing there but two strip malls".
John and Andrea and Carolyn began going for visits in the summer time as well. Andrea and Carolyn enjoyed being able to write on the walls at Susan and Al's home as it had been stripped to the wall boards for the renovations.
They bought a “shack” in Rock Glen across the back alley from Susan and Al’s house. The kids went back and forth visiting Grandma Tobelito.
Sydney and Grandma share an ice cream cone
Susan and Al were very involved in scouting with the kids, and went to Scout Camp Pianu at Moose Mountain Provincial Park every summer. One year Mom and Dad went with them.
Having Mom and Dad so close was not without its frustrations. Mom sometimes used to get anxious when asked to do something, and wanted to get things just right. Once Susan needed a large quantity of ice cubes for an event the scouts were catering as a fund raiser. She asked Mom to help her make ice cubes. Well, she soon wished she hadn't asked as Mom wanted detailed instructions: "How many ice cubes?" "How big do you need them?" "What size bags?" "Are these OK?" The questions never stopped until Susan was ready to scream "It's just Ice Cubes"
At Pianu
Dad of course renovated the shack and turned it into a cozy home. Mom surrounded it with flowers and they built a huge vegetable garden, growing their favourites, broad beans, runner beans, potatoes, eggplant, pickling onions, beets and sugar peas. They would work together every fall, freezing them all. Mom loved all kinds of flowers except white ones. She always said white flowers reminded her of funerals. She hung up bird feeders for the finches and doves and other birds and enjoyed watching them.
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The "shack"
The garden
Mom kept up her exercise program. Every morning she went for a long walk, up the hill, across the top, and down again. When I visited I would go with her. “Come on” she’d say “I go quickly”. She took on the job of cutting the rather large amount of lawn, using a lawnmower Dad called her “Exercise Machine”
Mom's exercise machine
Mom soon got to know everyone in Rock Glen. She made friends with Claudette the librarian and with the hairdresser. Dad particularly like the local co-op where he purchased lumber, hardware, and everything else he needed for his projects. He helped Susan and Al finish the renovations on their home in Rock Glen; building the kitchen cupboards and cabinetry in Christopher and Gregory’s room.
Dad had always hated Revenue Canada, and had such a bad experience with the pictures in Weyburn. So when he received a notice in the mid 1990's that his Income Tax was to be audited he was worried and angry and grumbled at length. A couple months later he was thrilled to receive a check in the mail for about $5500.00! Well, the same thing happened the following year, and again he grumbled about Mr Bloodsucker thinking that his rebate from last year would be clawed back. Darned if he didn't get $7200.00 that year. Well, when it happened again, and again he got a large rebate, he began to look forward to getting audited. Apparently, he got audited about 5 years in a row, and got a rebate each year; and then Revenue Canada gave up. Dad changed accountants as well, because the one he was using was obviously missing things.
They met a woman called Renie. She was a very interesting person, who had served in the WRAF in Britain in WW11, in communications. As enough time had passed and the events were no longer secret, Renie was able to tell them of how she had intercepted German communications, and been a part of secret communications for the Allies. They became very good friends and visited her frequently. Renie was an avid gardener both of indoor and outdoor plants and gave Mom perennials and African Violets.
In 1999 Graham and Marsha came to Saskatchewan for a visit. We held a family gathering at my house in Regina. Everyone except Carolyn and Andrea were able to come. It was the first time in a very long time that so many of the family were able to be together. Graham got special T-shirts made up and we all wore them.
The T-shirt
The family
Dad got rid of the Cadillac and they purchased a 1990 Oldsmobile. Both Mom and Dad loved this car. It was very smooth to ride in and to drive. Mom felt comfortable driving this car.
Dad had experienced problems with his back for many years. Finally he had to have an operation called a laminectomy. He had this in Regina and experienced first hand the frustrations of the health system from the other side of the bed. He showed up for the operation, was prepped and ready to go for surgery and then got bumped. Mom and I had gone shopping, and poor Dad had to wait in the hospital til he got hold of Cameron who took a bus up to get him as we had the car. Then a few weeks later he finally had the surgery, and on the day he was discharged from the hospital put aside the walker he had been lent and decided to take a sledgehammer to posts in the garden.
Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He saw a specialist in Saskatoon and decided against invasive measures. He used to say that most men his age had prostate cancer, and it was a very slow growing condition. He always said he would die from some other condition than the cancer. He accepted a hormone treatment, and the cancer went into remission for many years.
He had cataract surgery on one eye in 2003. Mom was driving him back from the hospital in Moose Jaw following the surgery, and they stopped for gas at the co-op where Susan was working. He looked at her face, saw a mark and said "that's cancer" It was a basil cell carcinoma, (rodent ulcer), and benign, but it freaked Susan out. She had it removed a few weeks later.
With Dad’s mechanical and technical abilities, one would have thought he would be a natural for computers, but not so. He was not really interested in acquiring a computer or the knowledge to use one, and resisted it. This all changed one day when they were visiting me and I happened to be playing Scrabble on the computer. That was it, they began using the computer, and Dad built a computer desk in the spare bedroom that he had converted into an office.
The computer desk
The “shack” had a shed, which Dad turned into a workshop. He began renovating it to make a studio for Mom to practice her line dancing in the summer time. Unfortunately he was not to finish this project before Mom passed away.
Mom became noticeably ill in July 2003. I went down to visit them for the long weekend. She seemed fine and we took “Mom’s walk” as usual. The next weekend John and Betty Lou went down and Mom’s legs were sore, and she did not take her usual walk. By the next week she was in bed, and strange looking nodules began erupting. Mom called them “scary noodles”. Dad and Dr. Carulei took a biopsy. She was referred to hospital in Moose Jaw, and got sicker and sicker. The whole family came and stayed with her at the hospital. It was a very emotional time for us all. Mom grew weaker and was in a lot of pain. Dad signed a DNR order. On August 1 she died.
We organized a memorial service in the garden at Rock Glen, among the flowers and birds she loved so much. It was a very sad day.
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Mom's Service
Memory table at the Hall
Dad was devastated. It was by far and away the worst thing to happen in his life. He sank into a terrible depression, from which he never really recovered. He did become interested in converting his photographs from black and white negatives on to the computer (the source of most of the pictures included here). Then Susan introduced him to Internet Bridge. He became addicted, and as “witchdoctor” he was on the computer every day playing bridge. He met a woman from Iowa named Sally, and developed a friendship with her. She was a rather strange person, an alcoholic and very controlling. To me she represented every negative stereotype of American women. Graham and Marsha referred to her as "the smoking drunk". The rest of the family did not like her at all, but she did help to bring Dad partially out of the terrible depression.
But he was never really the same. He went on a cruise with Sally and broke his hip in Rome. He stayed with me for a while, and then he and Gregory shared a suite in Regina. He broke his second hip visiting in Iowa a couple of years later.
We had been worried about his driving for some time as he was becoming increasingly confused on the road. He was followed home by a police officer one day, and then received a letter saying he had to take a driving test. Gregory tried hard to teach him the rules of the road, but he failed the test and lost his license. It was a major blow to his independence, but necessary for his and other people's safety.
After he broke his second hip he needed more care and moved into a care home. He recognized that he needed the care, but it was not what he wanted. For Dad this was his worst nightmare come true. He had always dreaded being old and helpless. When living in Weyburn he had sometimes filled in for the doctor at Souris Valley Hospital, formerly the Saskatchewan Hospital, a psychiatric institution; but by then a level IV nursing care home. Dad hated going there and seeing the people "lined up like sausages" along the hallways. He always used to say "hit me over the head with a hammer before you put me in one of those places". He recognized though that he needed the care, and that the staff at the care home were very good.
Dad with two of the staff, Dindin and Florinda
The staff were very kind. They enjoyed him because he was pleasant and respectful. Most of the staff were new Canadians, many from the Phillipines. This created some misunderstandings in communication, particularly with some of the expressions commonly used. One day Dad told the staff he had to "spend a penny". We all know that means he needed to use the washroom, but the Phillipino staff were very confused, wondering why he wanted to go and spend money suddenly. Dad's friend Sally happened to call just then and explained the mystery.
The prostate cancer he had been treating with hormones for years mestasticized. He gradually declined and became weaker. He still had good days though when he would remember things that had happened. He was always pleased to hear of trips that we were taking, especially to the Caribbean. He remained courteous and never complained, even when he must have been in pain. He slept more and more. One of the care home workers, Mu Thu, commented "Nice man, but sleepy".
As he grew weaker, his care became too much for the care home staff to manage, and on July 9 he was transferred to the hospital, where he was placed in Palliative care. He was calm, and we played his favourite Mozart on the stereo for him, and put a picture of Mom where she could watch over him. On July 12, Susan and I visited him, and as we were leaving, he mouthed "Love You". The next morning we were called up to the hospital, but by the time we got there he had gone. We were sad, but we knew he was with Mom, and that was what he wanted.
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