Garden Up-and-Down-Date

When we got home from the US, about the first thing I did was visit the garden to see what had happened in our absence. I was well pleased with how much everything had grown and how much promise there was for food, though some of the spinach and the broccoli had gone to seed.


The nasturtiums (nasturtia?) had orange flowers, the beans had red and the tomatoes had yellow ones. It was a big change from the brown squares I'd left behind.


The potted zucchini and pumpkin plants looked happy in their refurbished laundry soap tubs (see before picture), painted red and brown.



Even the house plants were glad to see us.


I was especially pleased to see the lovely colourful chard stalks.


Unfortunately it's been pretty much downhill since then. Enter buckets and lashings of rain, making the brick wall around the garden into an escargatoire, in spite of my sprinkling little blue pellets (no, I'm not organic -- far too lazy for that) and picking at least a dozen a day to be heartlessly murdered. I've always read that snails and slugs love lettuce more than anything, but my lettuce is doing wonderfully, thank you. Our snails are apparently rather picky and much prefer the beans and the mange tout.


When we returned we had ants in our kitchen, something we've never had before. After a little internet research, I sprinkled talcum powder in strategic locations (no telling what the post lady thought of the whiteline sprinkled across the front door) for a week or two and they vanished from the house. Bill found a swarm in the spaces between the paving stones near the back gate. As soon as he sprinkled that with his weapon of choice -- ant poison -- they moved into our compost bin. These were about half crawling and half flying ants and when they were in full force on the lid of the bin, well, I let them have it.


Bill didn't seem to think the ants would do any harm to the plants, but it was about this time I noticed the cabbage leaves were quite holey and the chard looked like lace. I didn't see many snails around that end of the garden and kept thinking it was ants until one day Bill mentioned cabbage butterfly and all the sudden those pretty little white butterflies weren't so pretty any more.


I went out and looked for the caterpillars but didn't find many on the undersides of the leaves. My reading suggests they prefer brassicas, so that doesn't explain why the tomatoes are rotting on the vine. Not that I had a lot of hope for the tomatoes, they were just a bargain buy -- as were the cabbages -- at the garden centre. I regret now buying the cabbages as I blame them for attracting the white cabbage butterflies, without which the chard might have done better. It is a cut and grow crop, like spinach, which seems to survive most anything, and so I've trimmed it back hoping to have another crop. I'm hoping that the caterpillars may have done their worst and with the cooler weather might be gone -- that may be very wishful indeed!


I didn't put holes in the bottoms of the pots, only a deep layer of rocks, for drainage. One of the major deluges completely filled the pots and the zucchini and pumpkins haven't looked well since, even though Bill went out and punched out drainage holes. Snails like these plants, too, but nothing like they like the 'red hot poker' plants.


When I sprinkled blue pellets around the front garden we were astonished at the number of casualties. I'm sure there is an opportunity for a snail-shell-road building aggregate business just waiting to be exploited. I've spared you the sad 'after' pictures of the plants; they are just too awful to view.

Strangely, even though the potted plants look dreadful they don't know they are dead -- they keep producing flowers, but only tiny little courgettes. None of the pumpkins gets bigger than a ping pong ball, but the offshoot looks all set to take over Dorothy's garden, next door.

Oh well, the leeks and the parsnips still look OK and the spinach is still producing. We have the odd bean and mange tout on offer and the pepper plants on the front porch are laden, though it's anyone's guess if we have enough warmth and sunshine left to allow the fruit to ripen. One of the ladies from the sewing group has bags of beans she's desperate to unload, so we'll not exactly starve -- and of course the green markets still have lots of produce, but it's not the same, is it?

Being an optimist, I've just ordered some plants and seeds from Marshalls: strawberries, raspberries, shallots, garlic and acorn squash...

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

43 Things about Grandma

1. Grandma was born 13 Sept 1890, in Stillwater, Minnesota and was named Clara Rose, which I always thought was a pretty name. I think she liked her name, too.

2. She was the 8^th child of 12, 11 of whom lived to a ripe age, a fact often given in newspaper clippings of family obituaries, so this may have been unusual for the time.

3. Grandma had brown hair and pale blue eyes. I would guess she was about 5’7”. She doesn’t appear to ever have been very thin, but she was never fat either. I don’t think she ever wore a girdle, as did my Grandmother, but as a child I thought of her as a pillow with a string tied around the middle. The pictures from her younger days suggest that while she wasn’t exactly pretty, she may have had an hourglass figure.

4. Grandma was raised a Lutheran. She later dabbled with Christian Science, though she still took lots of medicines. I don’t remember going to church as part of Grandma and Grandpa’s routine, though they may have done when my Dad was younger. I have several small prayer books, one of which is in German and has an ivory cover. Grandpa seemed to go along with whatever was Grandma’s current fancy pertaining to religion. Crosses, prayers and religious pictures were part of the décor in their house.

5. Grandma always believed that her father was born in Indiana, where his family first settled. In fact, he was born in Furth, Lindenfels, Germany. He appears to have altered the spelling of his name about the time of WWI when it may not have been very popular to be German. I gather that two of his sons fought in the war against his homeland. That must have been very strange; then again, my Dad mentioned to me once that his ancestors immigrated to the US because they didn’t like living under Kaiser Wilhelm. Grandma is in the front on the left.

6. I know very little of Grandma’s life before she married. From the pictures of her family I gather they were fairly well off, better off perhaps than her husband’s family. When she was 22, Grandma married Jacob, whom she called Jake, 20 February 1913. They had been married 60 years at the time of Grandpa’s death.

7. She was 4 years older than Grandpa, which embarrassed her, though I see that her brother Henry was 5 years younger than his wife, Ann, who was Grandpa’s sister. Perhaps this age difference wasn’t all that uncommon at the time. She wore a hole in the page of the family Bible changing her birth year; I always found that amusing, but a bit sad.

8. I think she was quite the clothes horse in her younger days, and I really enjoy looking at the style of her clothes from nearly a century ago. When I remember her she wore simple cotton dresses, of dainty floral prints and with matching belts, hosiery and practical walking shoes, usually beige, with holes in for air circulation. I think this was an accepted uniform for older women in the early 1960’s.

9. Grandma was always very tidy in appearance; I only ever saw her in her nightgown and robe just before bed. She was an early riser. She wore matching earrings and necklaces a lot. She and Grandpa both wore glasses.

10. She wore Wind Song perfume. After Mom and Dad split up, I once gave one of my Dad’s girlfriends some Wind Song perfume for Christmas, thinking it might put him off her. This idea amused me very much.

11. She had one son, Lyle, born in 1918 who was the apple of her eye and the centre of her world.

Naturally, when I came along, she thought I was wonderful, too.

12. Grandma was always a housewife as I remember, but from Mom’s letters in 1944, she possibly worked in a photographic studio in Madison with Grandpa for a while.

13. Grandma’s family was mainly in Minneapolis, though later generations scattered as far as California and Florida (and me, here in England). She and Grandpa lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1934 and by 1944 they’d moved to Madison. They followed Mom and Daddy to Oklahoma City in the late forties or early fifties. It was there that they bought the first and only house they ever owned. Mom was telling me one time about how excited she had been when she and Daddy bought their house in the Village before it was built, and how seeing this Grandpa had decided to also buy his first house. I was surprised to learn that before WWII it was more usual for most people to only ever rent their houses rather than to own. This of course was quite different by the time I came along.

14. Grandma always knitted her own dishcloths; I don’t remember her knitting anything else. She taught me to cover hangers with strips of nylon her sisters sent her. She kept a giant needle and a long thread for me in the button drawer of her treadle sewing machine. She would let me string buttons for hours, but always warning me to be careful with the needle. I don’t remember ever seeing her sew, except to mend clothes by hand. Her sewing machine sits beside the front door in the hall of this house.

15. Grandma was the family correspondent, keeping up with 10 brothers and sisters, and numerous nieces and nephews. I have letters and cards from more nieces and nephews than I can fit into a family tree. I have no idea about what sort of education she will have had, but the letters I have of hers are all grammatically correct and written in neat, square-ish handwriting.

16. She tended to be quiet; I never heard her speak loudly or at length. I don’t remember her as expressing strong opinions about anything. She always struck me as being a slightly anxious, timid person. She seemed to worry a lot about the people she loved.

17. Grandma never drove a car, so far as I know. Grandpa took her with him most places; otherwise she stayed at home.

18. Grandma was as thrifty and careful about money as Grandpa. I never heard her complain about not having enough money, but when Daddy was down in Dallas her letters to him asked that he repay the money he had borrowed from them.

19. They went back to Minnesota or Wisconsin most summers to visit family. I gather family members came down to Oklahoma City occasionally, but I don’t remember ever meeting any of them, strangely.

20. She warned me often to watch my fingers around the wringer washing machine and though she often used a pressure cooker, she seemed to regard it as fairly dangerous. I think this is why I’ve never learned how mine works; I’m afraid of it! Grandma used a push sweeper on their short pile carpets in the living and dining room. She had a meat grinder that clamped on the kitchen counter and had a big handle that turned. I still use it to make bread crumbs.

21. I remember hiding between the sheets and playing with the clothes pegs while Grandma hung her washing on the lines in their back yard; we called it ‘helping’ Grandma. She was a methodical, meticulous housekeeper, but she let me turn the house upside down when I came over. She was rarely idle, usually darning or knitting when she sat.

22. Grandpa and I used to make a ‘train’ that was sort of an obstacle course with the rugs and chairs that twisted and turned through as many rooms of the house as we could make it. We did put it all back of course, that was part of the game.

23. I don’t recall seeing her read much, but she clipped obituaries and kept funeral cards and crushed flowers in her Bible. She also wrote out birth dates and dates of death and the family and place names and put these pages from a stenographer’s pad into her Bible. It is this information that has enabled me to do most of my genealogy research on Daddy’s side of the family.

24. She played cards with Grandpa and me, but always left it to Grandpa to play checkers with me.

25. Looking back it seems I rarely took my dolls or toys to their house; there were endless other things to do over there, thing I only did at their house. It seems I grew up experiencing 3 separate cultures in my parents and grandparents’ houses.

26. Grandma never swore, never smoked, rarely finished a single beer, though she did occasionally have seconds of Mom’s cooking.

27. Grandma was very affectionate with me, I remember lots of hugs and kisses. In the last year I found one of her nephews from Minnesota, Clay, who now lives in California. He and his sisters say she was always their favourite aunt and she was very affectionate with them.

28. She liked to have me sit in her lap and to scrape half an apple with a spoon, feeding it to me like baby food. She did this until I rebelled around the age of 6 or 7.

29. She always put a chair beside the bed when I spent the night so I wouldn’t fall out of bed, even after I thought this was a silly thing to do.

30. She firmly believed in Vick’s Vaporub and a scratchy wool cloth on the chest to help a cold; I learned to avoid visiting Grandma & Grandpa if I had a cold.

31. Every day, Grandma had to have Grandpa put in her drops eyes for glaucoma, though a doctor later told us she probably didn’t have glaucoma after all. Still, this was part of the routine of the day for them and it was a major multi-step procedure that started with moving the chair away from the desk, getting the medicine bottle out of the box, having tissues to hand, etc. I think I thought I was watching minor surgery or something.

32. She saved all the birthday and Mother’s Day cards she got – and I still have a good number of them, as they are old and interesting and I am perhaps nearly as sentimental as she was, though I don’t save my own cards, well, not very many.

33. Grandma always liked it that her birthday and Grandpa’s were only 3 days apart. I don’t recall that they exchanged presents beyond a card or did anything all that different about their birthdays, but they were acknowledged as special days.

34. Grandma saved her (giant economy) dishwashing soap bottles with the snip-off tops for me to play with in the bathtub. It was great fun to fill them up and squirt the water out (though never at Grandma – I wouldn’t dare even think of it!) Another game we had was for her to help me try out ‘hairstyles’ sculpted from shampoo.

35. Grandma’s cutlery was a mismatched collection. When I expressed a preference for the design of a certain, knife, fork and spoon, they became ‘mine’ and appeared on the table at my place ever after. She routinely made my favourite dish of hers when I came over: beef stew in the pressure cooker. I ate it a la carte, putting butter on the mashed carrots and potatoes and ketchup on the beef.

36. According to Mom, Grandma preferred Daddy’s first wife, Adeline, to my mom, though I never heard either of my grandparents ever speak the woman’s name. Mom and Grandma never argued or anything, Mom just wasn’t included in the circle of people Grandma fussed over and the main effort in the relationship was made by Mom, who didn’t really seem to mind that much.

37. Sadly, Grandma’s only son found her expressions of love and concern smothering and irritating. He seemed to keep her at arms’ length as much as possible and only provided birthday and Mother’s Day cards with Mom’s prodding (purchase and provision of a pen, if I recall correctly). Even when I was fairly young I was able to understand why he felt smothered, as I did too sometimes, but I did think that he could have been kinder to his mother all the same.

38. Grandma loved to tell me about her father, her brothers and sisters, none of whom I ever met. I used to think she was jealous of Grandpa’s family and that was why there weren’t as many pictures of them and they didn’t seem to keep in touch as much. Now I realize that while she may have felt that way, it is more likely because Grandpa was the youngest child of a much older family and many of them had died by the time I came along. I also think his family had less money when he was growing up and consequently fewer family photos from that time.

39. Grandma began to lose her mental capacity by the mid-to-late 60’s. I remember at our house Grandpa having to follow her to the bathroom to make sure she was presentable when she returned to the living room. This may be in part why she was so quiet, because she was slipping away. One day when they picked me up from school she handed me an envelope with a note inside. When I opened the note a little plastic spider fell into my lap and I squealed and we all laughed. Even at that time it struck me as being an unusual thing for her to do and I wondered if it was perhaps a glimpse of what she was like before senility began to creep in.

40. She began to lock the screen door when Grandpa went out to mow the lawn and seemed forget he existed. We could all see the humorous side of this situation, but it was also frustrating for my Grandpa. Grandma’s encroaching senility may have been part of what my Dad found difficult to be around; being dependent or disabled in that way was one of his chief fears.

41. After Grandpa died and Mom came over to care for her, Grandma wandered around in the house in her pajamas, as though looking for something, though she only asked for ‘Jake’ once. Mom said Grandma seemed to vaguely understand when told he was ‘gone’.
    

42. Grandma was impossible to keep in bed, but she fell often and Mom wasn’t strong enough to help her up. Much as Mom hated it, they had to put Grandma into a nursing home. She only lived a few months longer.

43. Grandma died of a stroke, on the 16^th of August, 1974, only a year after Grandpa. Just as their dates of birth were only 3 days apart, so were their dates of death.

My Rita

1. Rita was born 12 September 1944; she was given for adoption to Catholic Charities.

2. She was adopted by my Grandmother when she was about 2 years old, along with 2 other babies, Pat and Linda (John came a just a little later). Grandmother named her Rita Elizabeth, though she already had the name Rita. Mom told me Rita had been previously adopted and named Rita Maxine, but she had been returned to the orphanage. As a child I remember being astounded and outraged that anyone could not adore Rita; I thought they must have been complete idiots.

3. She was a beautiful girl with curly dark hair and bright brown eyes. She had something wrong with her feet that required surgery and some braces for a while.


4. My mom was about 26 when Grandmother adopted the 4 children. As I mentioned earlier, Mom adored children. I think Mom partly took them on as her own, not just as siblings. There are nearly as many pictures of them as there were of me when I came along.

Mom and Rita were always especially close.


5. Rita was 12 when I was born. I have a letter she wrote to Mom when she heard about the pregnancy; she hoped I’d have brown eyes like hers. Rita was my number one babysitter and in many ways like a second mother.

6. Rita was maybe about 5’8” and I'm not going to guess how much she weighed! She was slender in her youth. Like most women she was never happy with her weight; she was always fighting with it and with her curly hair, something I never understood. Rita also had serious acne as a teen. Nevertheless, Mom and I always agreed that Rita was beautiful. Even when Rita was older, she was striking. Bill says she was good at glam, which pretty much nails it. Rita seemed to take pleasure in looking her best but I don’t think she ever really thought of herself as a pretty woman, which is a shame.

7. Rita didn’t do well in school and struggled with dyslexia; consequently she ended up graduating high school later, in the same year as Linda and Pat, from Classen High School.

8. Rita was a devout sun-worshipper and tanned beautifully, with the help of a little Johnson’s Baby Oil with added Mercurochrome (or was it iodine – something reddish brown). One of my earliest memories is of 3 or 4 teenagers on sun loungers in the long driveway beside Grandmother’s big house on 31^st & Western, Gene Pitney on the radio, iced drinks to hand.

9. Rita attended church regularly – all the kids did – at the Metropolitan Baptist Church back when it was on 50^th Street and Rev. David Cotten officiated. ( Rita kept the news clipping when he left.) If I was at Grandmother’s on a Sunday, which was usual, I went, too. I loved watching Rita get ready for church: hair curlers -- and lots of hair spray, make-up, pretty slip, best dress, matching shoes, jewelry; a real production. Nothing less was appropriate. I’m always surprised at how casually people dress for church now (not that I’m there so often I could claim any authority on the matter). As a child, I couldn’t read the sign out front and when asked where I attended church, I told people we went to the Methodist Baptist Church; it was a long time before I understood why they smiled.

10. The earliest I can remember, Rita worked as a hospital volunteer. She was going to be a nurse and soon after she graduated high school she become a Licensed Practical Nurse.

11. Rita sewed most of her clothes when she was younger. When she wasn’t working, it always seemed she was sewing. She had beautiful clothes and lots of them.

12. Rita loved to drive. She loved sporty cars and changed her car fairly frequently. She drove fast and confidently; she’s the only other person I ever heard my Dad say he approved of their driving. I don’t remember her ever having an accident, but she probably had a few speeding tickets!



13. Rita didn’t date much that I recall, something I never understood, but she always had lots of friends. She seemed to make friends easily and kept long term ones as well. After she retired she had a whirlwind social schedule lunching with all her different groups of friends. When she was younger, I always had the impression that Rita was very disappointed at not finding a husband and having children.

14.Rita didn’t swear (“Oh, darn!!!"); she never smoked. She didn’t like alcohol, but she did like her food.

15. Rita liked peppery foods – the hotter the better. She put pepper on everything, loved hot chilies, mustard and Mexican food. I don’t eat much pepper, but one time when I was ill, she made me a fried egg, something I normally didn’t like. She chopped it up with salt and pepper and served it in a coffee mug with a fork so I could eat it in bed; it was delicious. To this day, when I eat fried eggs I always think of her as I pick up the pepper. She also taught me to love dill pickles with salt on them.

16. One of her best friends in high school was named Esther. Esther also had a niece, named Lois Ann, who visited from out of town. I remember several times being out on a Saturday night in Rita’s car with Esther and Lois Ann. There were a number of teenage hang outs, the Split-T and Quick’s hamburger joint among them, and perhaps the Charcoal Oven, that were included in the rounds. The idea, I gather, was to talk to boys. This meant that Lois Ann and I had to duck down in the back seat floor and stay out of sight. I remember the heater vent being hot against my cheek. One time we popped up too soon, and some boy asked ‘Who dominoed?’ I needed a translation for that and I’ve never heard the term since. In more recent years every visit to OKC included Rita and I going to Johnnie's for burgers and his incredible onion rings.

17. Rita and I had great times when I was a kid. She took me everywhere fun: to movies, the swimming pool, Twilight Beach, Frontier City (an amusement park), Quick’s for a coke or a shake. One time she took me with her to Dallas for her friend’s wedding, my first trip across the state line. Over the years she did these fun things with all the children in her family. When I stayed at Grandmother’s I slept with her, she cooked for me, I was her shadow. She wasn’t my Aunt Rita, she was My Rita. As I child I was very possessive of her and I wanted to be just like her. I even majored in nursing my first semester at university; however that only lasted until I realized I’d be dealing with other people’s body fluids -- ick!

18. My Grandmother wasn’t an easy person to live with. Though I loved my Grandmother, I always knew she had a quick temper and took a sour sort of pleasure from a good argument. To be fair, she was raising 4 teenagers, but I remember her YELLING a lot. When she yelled at and upset Rita, I would be rather cool to Grandmother, just to let her know whose side I was on, though for the most part I could do no wrong in Grandmother’s eyes. In later years Rita was fiercely loyal to Grandmother. She was curious about her birth mother and did look up what she could discover. She told me she only found out her mother was French Canadian, but nothing else. I think she was a little disappointed not to learn more, but she was adamant that her Mother was the woman who raised her. She stayed close to Grandmother and visited her and my Mom often when they were older. As I recall most of her apartments and the house she bought were near The Village, where Mom lived.

19. During Rita’s student nurse days, she came upon a traffic accident. Using her first aid skills, she was credited with saving a woman’s life. We were all proud of Rita, but then we were already very proud of her anyway.



20. There are several things that always stood out to me about Rita’s character. One was that she was always very positive. Even when she complained about her curly hair (‘My hair! I can’t do a thing with it!) or talked about a disappointment, it was always with a dismissive laugh, including when she dealt with a number of life-threatening illnesses she had over the years. I rarely ever saw her cry. Somehow even when you had the impression that she wasn’t particularly happy, she still seemed to remain cheerful. The more I think about that, the more impressed I am. Though on the face of it she seemed to take things lightly, underneath she had a lot of stubborn determination. If she wanted something, like her RN qualification, she stuck it out, no matter how tough.

21. Rita almost never lost her temper; I can only think of a couple of occasions when she was really angry. It took an awful lot to make Rita lose it, and this was extraordinarily rare; but if you were foolish enough to really push her that hard: look out. Rita was entirely capable of taking care of herself!

22. She had quite a bit of confidence in her abilities to do things. She didn’t shy away from fixing things around the house and she was extremely confident in her nursing skills. The only time I ever saw her nervous was when I asked her to pierce my ear for me. I was quite patient and it wasn't too bad, but she fretted and fumbled, worried that she was hurting me. I was amused by that.

23. Finally, and foremost, Rita knew about caring and doing for others. When I was sick, she knew how to make me more comfortable; when Grandmother was in a nursing home, she visited every single day to make sure she was well looked after; a woman at the church told me Rita insisted on using the china plates for the post-funeral lunches instead of paper plates as usual, so it would be nicer for the bereaved families.

24. Rita was a do-er and she didn’t sit still for long. She stayed busy sewing, decorating her current apartment or house, running around with friends, shopping or cooking. She was in and out of the house a lot, running errands or picking up something she needed for the current project. She always seemed to be full of enthusiasm for all the things she wanted to do.

25. She loved to travel, though to my knowledge she only went abroad the once when she and Jack visited us here in England. Before they got together she went skiing and camping with friends, visited Disneyland, San Francisco and Padre Island, among other places. She actively developed a single lifestyle that involved a lot of fun and different experiences. She and Jack were always planning their next vacation, driving to see Jack’s daughters and grandchildren, taking Caribbean or Alaskan cruises.

26. She only bought one house; before that she had apartments and roommates. Mom once remarked that landlords couldn’t wait to get rid of Rita. She fixed up her apartments so well she upgraded their value and landlords could get more money from the next tenant. Rita liked decorating places, making curtains and buying furniture. Her apartments always seemed really cool and trendy when I was a kid.

27. Rita had a LOT of STUFF. Her house was always pretty tidy, but it was FULL. She had a spare closet stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of shoes, the garage had racks and racks of clothes, she had bookcases with shelves stacked with t-shirts – all grouped by colour. She worked hard at keeping it organized, but constantly kept her credit cards maxed and a couple of times had some financial difficulties because of her spending habits. When she wanted more money, she just worked extra shifts.

28. Over the 40 some years of Rita’s nursing career she worked briefly at St Anthony’s and Presbyterian; for a long time at Children’s and Baptist hospitals. She worked in a burn unit, as part of one of the first open heart surgical teams, and finally in neonatal intensive care where she settled.os kjfdlkjdf Rita loved working with babies.

29. There were a few very special children, one of which was Scotty. Scotty was hospitalized from birth and for many years. His parents were in the military and stationed far away. Rita invited them to stay at her home when they were up visiting and when they couldn’t come, she took Scotty out with his wheelchair and all his supporting equipment to give him special treats like going to a movie or an amusement park or just ‘running around’ like she did with me. Scotty was the ring bearer when she and Jack married.

30. Though she wasn’t good in the academic area, she was a whiz at practical things. She installed her own new kitchen sink and most all of the ceiling fans in her house. She could look at a complicated bag or piece of clothing and just copy it, without a pattern. I watched in amazement at some of the things she accomplished. I always said she was good at ‘three-dimensional visualization’, something I struggle with.

31. At some point around the 1970s, Rita had a very short marriage to someone named Wayne. I met him only once and I have a picture of them together. He was not attractive, I don’t remember him as particularly charming and I gather he tried to gain financially from their divorce. I think Rita was upset about the failure of the marriage, but I was always glad she’d got shed of him.

32. A few years later she decided that being an LPN wasn’t enough, she wanted to become a Registered Nurse. She went back to school to get this qualification. We were all amazed that Rita would willingly go back to school, knowing it would be tough for her. During the time she was working and studying, Rita contracted a serious fungal lung disease. Her lungs collapsed twice and had she not been at work where medical staff could promptly help, she might well have died much younger. She was put on a long course of steroids which of course had side effects. She hated how she ‘swelled up like a football player’. This on top of the stress of school was a very difficult time for Rita, but she made it through and got her RN qualification. We were all so proud of her. Her father, Grandmother’s ex-husband, even came to the graduation ceremony, the only time I ever remember meeting him.

33. When I got a job offer and decided to move to Utah, Rita helped me drive there in my little Mazda GLC, with a golden retriever (Sunny) and Mom’s white cat (sedated, in a box) in the back seat. It took us 2 days and I really enjoyed the trip, though it was scary to be leaving Oklahoma City, where I’d lived all my life. Rita loved the adventure I was having, but was sad to see me leave as well. Before we left I had some last minute packing and it wasn’t going well at all. She took everything out of my suitcase and showed me her ‘zip-and-stuff’ method. She put all the hard items in the case and some of the bigger soft items. All the shoes and empty spaces were filled with little things. Then she started at the back, used the zipper to create a corner and rolled and STUFFED the smaller items into every available inch of space. Everything went into the 2 suitcases, easily. I’ve used her method since then and think of her whenever I pack a suitcase.

34. Rita met Jack through a personals ad that her friends at work wrote for her. She put the ad and his answering letter in the front of their wedding album, though they didn’t marry for some years, Jack being a bit shy of going that route again. They’d been together for 5 or 6 years when Rita was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. It was the most aggressive type and she had several surgeries to remove it all. After watching her go through that, Jack cracked and they were married on 23 December 1991.

35. After Jack retired, Rita thought he needed broader interests than a weekly breakfast with other retired colleagues. She got him involved in delivering meals on wheels and volunteering at Mercy hospital. Rita joined the Catholic church and they began attending regularly, getting involved in the social side as well. When she told me about it she was vaguely embarrassed and apologetic, all her family being firmly Baptist. I remember how she flapped her hand dismissively, saying “But, you know, it’s the same God.” I really didn’t mind what Rita did, though it did seem a little strange at the time. I took it as a demonstration of how much she loved and cared about Jack; both he and the church benefited greatly from her involvement and she had yet another group of friends.

36. A few years later I was divorced (again) and had a job offer in England. I needed help fixing up my house in Salt Lake City to rent it out. She and Jack and Pat all drove to SLC and stayed a week or two. She and I re-tiled the kitchen floor and painted the bathroom, along with other improvements Jack and Pat did.

37. Rita had another health challenge, with hepatitis C, which we always assumed she contracted through her work. She lost a lot of weight during her 6 month course of interferon, saying that food had a metallic taste she found unpleasant. To be certain that the virus was completely gone, she was willing to do another course, but doctors assured her this was unnecessary. As she gained her weight back, she gave me some of her smaller clothes, which – as you might guess -- I still have. The doctors were right about the hepatitis, though. Rita was an organ donor and her liver is now giving new live to a recipient in California.

38. After over 40 years of nursing, Rita finally retired. She had only worked part time-occasional for a number of years, but she was increasingly annoyed with the changes in hospital management and was ready to be done. She was a member of several Red Hat groups and stayed busy keeping up with friends from Childrens, friends from Baptist, sewing friends and family members.

39. Rita was the centre of our family for quite a while, particularly after Mom died, though I didn’t really appreciate how much. She kept me informed about the major events of her aunts and cousins, the people of Mom’s and Grandmother’s generations. Rita always rang me on my birthday and at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We sometimes seemed to run out of what to say, our lives were so separate by that time, but we always told each other how much we loved each other and that was still very true.

40. Her sewing interests moved from making clothes into computerized machine embroidery. As usual she collected all the tools and supplies and all my Christmas presents for the last few years had beautifully ornate embroidery. She also liked beaded items and made a purse that a friend promptly bought from her. I asked why she didn’t sew for money instead of work at the hospital. She replied that then it would be work instead of fun, which made a lot of sense. Rita made Halloween costumes, designed and sewed wedding and brides maids' dresses dresses, made convention bags for Jack’s retired colleagues’ convention in Oklahoma City, made pictorial quilts for wedding anniversaries, sewed baby items for hospital fund-raisers and generally turned her sewing skills and creativity to any place they were useful and needed.

41. Bill and I have always talked about going to live in the US one day. I envisioned moving into Mom’s old house, about a mile from Rita’s. I was going to fix up the house and make it more modern and comfortable. I was going to have a big vegetable garden and give some of the surplus to Rita; I imagined Jack’s turning his nose up at having too many vegetables in his diet, him being very carnivorous. I was going to get Rita to go to the YMCA with me to swim and to go for walks in the evening. She was going to come over and teach me to sew better and we would ‘run around’ together like we did when I was a kid. I didn’t realize how much I’d envisioned about this future until she was gone and it wasn’t going to happen.

42. Bill and I were awakened by the phone ringing about 2 or 3 am one morning. We didn’t get there before Pat left a message that Rita had had some surgery to repair an aneurysm and it hadn’t gone well. Rita wasn’t expected to make it and the last rites had been given. The doctors were going to wait 24 hours before taking a decision about removing her from life support. It was a long 24 hours.

43. Rita died last year, 25 October 2007, aged 63. When the priest talked about her life at the funeral I felt a real sense of awe at all the good she had done. I had always just thought of her as ‘My Rita’, whom I loved so much, but more than almost anyone else I know Rita used her talents to reach out to people and give practical, tangible help. It’s not yet been a year since she’s been gone and we all miss her more than we can say.