When Blake was just a couple of weeks old (end of 1975) my dad had to go in for open heart surgery. He was born without an aortic artery...or maybe it was the valve...anyway he was about to go in for surgery when his surgeon (Russel M. Nelson) came to talk to my mom. He felt inspired to do the surgery in a different way than he originally planned. He drew a picture for my mom showing her his plan and went in to do the surgery. It worked! My dad survived. Because of his lack of blood flow (warning big family secret coming!!!) my dad was unable to have children. My two oldest brothers were adopted and the final 3 of us were doner conceived. Fast forward to 2003...the new valve that President Nelson (he also happened to be a neighbor to my dad when he was growing up-his daughter even dated my Uncle) had put in had become infected. That's why he had been so sick leading up to the family Christmas party. My mom had taken him to the ER 3 times over the last week or two and they found nothing wrong. This time in the hospital they discovered the problem and scheduled surgery for December 24th 2003. They couldn't just fix it because the tissue had deteriorated too much so the best bet was to go back and do the surgery the way President Nelson was supposed to do it the first time. We were told he had a 50/50 chance of survival. After his first surgery he contracted Hepatitis C so his liver was bad-he had diabetes-and only had one kidney (the other had been removed sometime when I was in HS I think because there was cancer on it). A few hours into surgery we all got hungry so we went to eat at the Rodezio grill. We all felt a little guilty going out to eat but after all-it was Christmas Eve and we had to eat. Shortly after we returned the Dr. came and gave us an update and said things were going well. A few of us left to get a few last minute Christmas things done. Steven and I went to his parents to drop of gifts for the family Christmas party. Just as we were about to head back to the hospital Eric called my cell and said to come back right now. When we arrived they took us back into a special room and told us my dad hadn't made it. I remember hugging Eric and asking what happened. He misunderstood and said-"He died." I told him I knew that but how? It seemed that his heart just didn't tolerate the way they tried to fix it. I'm so grateful that Pres. Nelson was inspired to do the original surgery the way he did so that I got to know my dad and also because I wouldn't exist. We also learned that his liver was so bad that he would not have lived for more than a year and even then he would have been slowly dieing of liver failure.
That night we decided to spend the night at Steven's parents house so we could see the joy on his nieces faces on Christmas morning to help keep things a little happier for me. Laurie gave me a massage that night. When we woke up it was harder than I had expected. Watching Steven's dad interact with his grand kids made me so sad because here I was-pregnant with my first child and without my dad. We left soon after because I just wanted to be home. On the way home it was snowing. Just before we got home a beautiful arrangement of Ave Maria was playing. We parked the car and finished listening to the song and I cried.
We had our family Christmas with the Hales like we normally would but it was a bit somber.
The viewing was nice and lots of friends and family were there. I sat on a chair most the time because I was pretty pregnant. Then it was time for the funeral. I didn't want to speak. Blake and I sang I heard him come. At this point not everyone knew about us kids being doner conceived (we had always known Eric and Evan were adopted). I think the only ones that knew were Evan and I. I found out when I was 22 because I thought I had diabetes and my dad kept trying to tell me that BOTH my parents didn't have it...so my mom told me in confidence without my dad knowing. They had also told Evan because they were going on a vacation together and thought someone should know just in case anything happened to them. So Blake gave his talk and talked about how everyone kept saying what a miracle my dads first surgery was but he thought the greater miracle was that he was born...I tried not to chuckle because I knew it was a "miracle" of science. Several weeks later my mom told Blake and Spence the big secret...she was traveling with them in her van. She was in the back-DeAnn and Logan in the middle and Spence and Blake in the front. She prefaced it with "You want to hear a funny story?" Spence and Blake just were quiet for a minute and then said "Oh-that makes sense." Weirdos! I was pretty upset by the whole thing when I found out. Boy's are weird. Oh- and we all had different doners and we have no information about them because at this time it was pretty experimental.
Anyway-back to December 23rd 2013. My mom isn't quite the party thrower that she used to be so Blake and I took charge and did the party at his house. We had our usual meal of soup-cheeseball-and rolls. It wasn't a huge turn out. It was our family-Kirk and Haldeen with Quin and Dani. Spence brought the costumes so we did a little nativity and Kirk did his traditional Christmas Dragnet. Steven played Joseph (or shall I say Hugh Hefner?) and Elese was Mary.
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