It was a week of ups and downs again as we flew down to be with Mom during her darker hours only to see what can only be described as a miraculous turnabout and an unbelievable set of circumstances that saw her get discharged – what a difference a week makes! I have to take a quick minute to say thank you to everyone for all the kind words of love, prayers & encouragement that we’ve received either by phone, email, social media or in-person. It was so overwhelmingly heart-warming that I can only say that I am humbled and that all will somehow be tolerable when any similar circumstances arise again in the future.
This week we go all the way back to last Sunday when Ann & I flew down to see Mom and be with Dad, Rob & Sharon. It was very difficult to see Mom in the condition she was in when we walked in to that hospital room but I’m so glad we did. And I am very thankful my lovely wife was at my side. She was so supportive and I would’ve been truly lost without her. Mom is very sick and was very discombobulated when we saw her. We would laugh later that if she knew some of the shit she said to us, she would shit. It is hard to see her in so much pain and know that she is slowly dying. She has said she is talking at night to her Mom & Dad who want her to join them. Thankfully she is still fighting; we’re not ready to say goodbye just yet. It was very sad to see her this bad, but Rob & Dad called that a good day. I could not imagine how hard it was those first few days before we got down here. Dad is hanging tough and although it very hard for him as well, he is trying to accept that it is what it is – to put it in a wise woman’s words. After visiting several hours with Mom, we needed an escape from this stark reality and went to a local watering hole called Niagara Tap bar & grill for some great hot wings & onion rings as well as several buckets of beers, shots of Petron and Yeggar-Bombs. We sat next to & fed the jukebox all night. It was a very cool atmosphere of a simple, small, neighborhood bar similar to Mike’s Bar & Grill back in Franklin – Ann & I’s old haunt back in our college days. We came back to Mom & Dad’s house and cried and talked and cried and drank and cried until 4 am. At some point there was a golf cart excursion with the brothers around the park. Needless to say it was a little slow going on Monday morning. Mom had trouble overnight by pulling out port lines and calling 911 (oops….). Dad went in after only a couple hours of sleep and spent the morning with Mom until she received another round of dialysis. Her numbers are slowly starting to get better. Dad came home and went to bed as the rest of us were just getting going. Rob, the girls and I ate a late breakfast at Maggie Mae’s on the Bluff. When we walked in, everybody came right up to us with questions about Mom & Dad. I had the Hillbilly Taters w/ 2 biscuits and gravy and it hit the spot! I was so hungry after tossing my cookies earlier this morning. Mom looked better again after brunch. We came home and napped after a few hours and then went back to see Mom again. It was encouraging when she actually fed herself! Unfortunately, she is still confused and depressed and in pain. Afterwards we went out for dinner at great place called Cheddar’s. We then came home and chilled – Dad & Sharon to bed while Rob, Ann & I watched the March Madness Championship game as UK dominated KU to win the national championship and the residents of Lexington rioted in the streets.
On Tuesday, Ann & I got up and went back in to see Mom w/ Dad early in the morning. Rob & Sharon joined us a little later. Ann and I grabbed breakfast at Maggie Mae’s again and this time I had Mom’s favorite – Eggs Benedict Arnold – yum. Rob & Sharon took Dad to his back procedure that will hopefully alleviate some of the debilitating pain in his back from a pair of bulging discs while Ann & I stayed with Mom. She again was up and down with some good moments and some not so good moments. Early in the day she was bound and determined she was going to pull out her medicine ports and tried like hell to do so. Dad & I stopped her and called for her nurse. We got her calmed down and refocused, she ate a little lunch and then settled in to take a nap so Ann & I left and grabbed a quick bite of lunch just down the road at a little place on Sand Key beach called Backwater’s – which is a sister restaurant to Maggie Mae’s! We just accidentally found this little place while out exploring. We sat on the boardwalk that overlooks the Gulf and enjoyed a blackened grouper sandwich that was delicious. We went back to find that Mom had a rough go of it but quickly snapped back. In fact, she ate better and even stood up and sat in a chair for a little while!! Way to go, Mom! At this point, her numbers were really starting to rebound finally and her personality was slowly beginning to return…although she is still going in and out; however, the dialysis treatments coupled with discontinuing her big pain meds are making her less “loopy.??? We visited for about 14 hours that day and she was doing very well when Ann and I left to meet Rob, Sharon & Dad back at the house (Dad did great with his back procedure) where Rob grilled out burgers and brats! We received a call right as supper ended that Mom was again having trouble again. So Rob & Sharon went in to help Mom while I ran Dad to Wal-Mart to do some work on the computer and Ann cleaned up dinner. Poor Rob got punched a couple times. We laughed about it the next day when Mom said that she wasn’t quite even with him yet!??? Mom settled down and I got Dad all set up but by the time we all got home, everyone was exhausted and so we all went to bed instead of the big euchre game we had tentatively planned.
We went in to visit Mom early on Wednesday and spent a great last morning with her. She was the best I’d seen her as she continued to progress nicely!! She ate by herself, stood up with my help, sat in a chair, asked questions (much more lucid), wrote a letter (it is sweet and funny all at the same time – wait till you see it below. We watched TV and talked – she’s doing so much better now…and that allowed me to allow myself to leave her and come back home – I’m not sure what I had done if she had not made such dramatic progress. Dad & Dave took us to the airport after Rob & Sharon got to the hospital to relieve us. We said our good-byes and Ann & I grabbled lunch at Carraba’s there in the Tampa airport before catching another AirTrans Boeing 737 (we were cramped again – coach sucks!). We made a pact on our way back to Indy that we would pay the extra to upgrade our tickets for any future endeavors! …and who did we see at the airport? Paul Drake!! We caught him up with what we were doing and it brought back several memories of his Dad. We got the car out of long term packing and picked up the kids at Mom & Gigi’s and came home. While we were gone, Lowe’s delivered Ann’s new stove – which Ann loves (although she wasn’t exactly thrilled with the whole delivery / installation process. She couldn’t wait until she tried it out with the first batch of popcorn and American Idol that night…
On Thursday, we went back to work. Thanks again to Mom & Sandy for all their help with the kids while we were out of town. Again, without them we wouldn’t be able to live like we do – thanks guys. Abby had track practice and Matt had weightlifting and free style wrestling. Abby hurt her knee again while doing hurdles, but she did – indeed – earn a spot on the main team for hurdles and long jump! That is awesome for a 6th grader, Bu! Despite being totally wiped that night, I decided it was best to go ahead and cut the lawn real quick. I had planned to do just the front, but couldn’t stop and ended up doing the whole yard up on the highest setting. The dogs were bummed. It took forever to get the backyard done…and my thighs were on fire for the next 24 hours. I absolutely died on the couch that night, but not before I pulled down some great pictures from Facebook.
The next day was Good Friday and the kids had the day off. Matt watched his little brother for us until Ann got home, shortly after lunch. Abby got up with us and Gigi came over and picked her up to work with her for the day. Abby put on the bunny suit and went with Sandy around town to do a special Easter promotion. It is a hot suit, but thankfully it was a cool morning – perfect for this. She was the cutest EB I’ve ever seen! Luke had Oakley over for the afternoon and just couldn’t help himself but get in to trouble. He ended up getting grounded for a week for his misadventures such as leaving the house without telling Mom, going in to the woods without permission, playing with a neighborhood boy he is supposed to avoid (that boy is out of control and today was no different as he ended up shooting at Luke with a pellet gun – thankfully he missed but apparently dented his bike) and just generally having difficulty listening. Luke also ruined another pair of his new blue jeans by playing…er accidentally falling in to a large mud puddle. I am not sorry that I missed Shitty Momma! He was able to walk with me that evening and he had lots of questions about Grandma Bryan. We had a good, long talk. Afterwards we went over to Gma & Gigi’s house where Keith & Rosie were staying for the holiday weekend and had just arrived. We had Mancino’s pizzas for dinner and caught up with everybody. It was a very nice evening over there until there was some cousin drama that cut the night short…
We were up early again on Saturday to run Bu out to the ball diamonds for the softball combine where her skills apparently shined pretty brightly among the gals that were out there that chilly morning. Meanwhile, Ann & I went around town and helped the Easter Bunny find appropriate gifts for the kids’ baskets. We all took naps after lunch before I spent the entire afternoon mowing the yard a second time as well as finally getting a chance to use my new Stihl weed eater that I got for Christmas! 😉 It was perfect weather and the yard really turned out nice after I was able to drop the deck down a couple levels. We rally need to get this pool out of the back yard and get our privacy fence re-built. I would also like to plant a couple more trees back there. We just need time to do everything! The news of the day, however, came out of Florida when Mom was released to come home!!!! …the greatest news I had this year… She sounds and looks great and I am so proud of her for fighting and hanging in there and so very, very thankful that her life quality has returned to some sense of normalcy. She had Dad go ahead and shave her head (her hair had already begun falling out at a pretty good clip when we were down there). She said it was driving her crazy and she just wanted it gone – so now we are trying to find her a Greensburg Pirates babushka or floppy had for her to wear. LOL Gigi let me borrow her data card and I pulled down some priceless pictures of Muffin, Mom & Sandy’s visit to Buffalo for Megan’s 10th birthday, Matt’s 16th birthday and the sunset from our backyard while they stayed with the kids this week.
Easter Sunday was surprisingly not an early one. We were proud of the kids for not waking us at the butt-crack of dawn this year, but instead allowed us to sleep in a little bit. The Easter Bunny hid the baskets pretty good this year. Luke found his right away though (apparently he had been searching for about an hour or so before we got up!). Abby was again the last to find hers this year. The kids loaded up on candy and played with their new treasures all morning before we called and everybody talked with Grandma and Grandpa Bryan for a while. Afterwards, we packed up and headed to Memaw’s house for Easter lunch. Ann brought the green bean casserole and dinner rolls again this year. Maryann & Sandy did us up as usual – ham and turkey, noonles and tadies, homemade mac ‘n cheese, dressing, sweet potatoes, deviled eggs, potato salad, olives from some farm store Keith & Rosie found, hard-boiled eggs, dirt pudding and a chocolate fountain – God it was good! We finished eating and had our big Easter egg hunt out in the yard. It was really fun for the kids and kudos goes to Jamie & Dee again for all their hard work in putting it together again this year. Afterwards, we came in for Gigi’s bingo. I think everyone won something, but Jamie was the big winner on the afternoon. We played several games and then came home for a nap. Once everyone was well rested, we headed back over for a yummy leftovers dinner and spent some time laughing and hanging out with Keith & Rosie before calling it an evening. It was good to see them and was hard to say good-bye again. Matt drove us home again, as he has been doing all this weekend. He has gotten a lot of driver’s seat time this weekend and is really doing well. He needs to get something like 50 hours or some outrageous amount like that before he can get his license. I think he might have 2 or 3 hours already!
Next is our video section. We start with two new family videos from the above events and the rest are just some random ones from around the net:
Now we have our Waybac section and we lead off with a few early pictures of Mom, including two from what I believe are from the summer of 1949 and the other one I think is Mom’s kindergarten picture at St. Bonifice elementary school in Lafayette.
We also have a few more from Mom & Dad Scheu’s wedding in April of ’68 including pictures of Mom beforehand with her bridesmaids – including “Little??? Vicki Albrights, Aunt Brenda, Cousin Vicky, and Aunts Sally & Mary, Grandpaw Brown and of course my lovely mother, Sandy.
And we wind it up in October of 1980 for several from right around Rob’s first birthday and includes pictures of our visit to Grandmaw & Grandpaw Brown’s house in Lafayette where we met up with our Great Grandpa Morgan one last time before his battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Also included here is a picture of Rob in Mom’s old rocking chair in our Kenwood St home in LaPorte and then our birthday party with the Bryan family, this time in Kokomo at Dan & Sharon’s house.
Our final section is The Shit that Luke Says. This week we have a couple, but one actually stems from Abby. The first one came this morning during our Easter basket opening. The kids all got suckers that made them look like they were bunnies (see pictures above). When Ann was describing what they looked like, she referred to them as the bunny noses, to which Abby says, “I thought they were beavers!??? Of course Luke picked up on it and began calling the Easter Bunny the Easter Beaver. 😉 Later, just after Gigi’s bingo had ended, we were talking about why we hadn’t had an Easter egg hunt at our house in a few years and I said that the Easter Bunny decided to just do one big one at Grandma & Gigi’s house. He replied, “Dad, there is no Easter Bunny – it’s just you and Mom.??? :0( I guess it’s official – the end of an era for the Scheu family – we had gone the past 15 years with a belief in this house by someone in the Easter Bunny – he’s not so sure about Santa yet, but I’m sure it’s coming…
And that puts the kibosh on another episode of the Scheu Family Blog. As always, we appreciate you taking the time to keep up with the family this time out and we’ll catch up with you again the next time out. Until then, have a good one.
Later, Scheu