Goodbye For Now, Sweet MIL

My sweet mother-in-law passed away in the early morning of last Friday. 

I was at work when I got the text from Husband. I am amazed that he managed to get himself to work, but he did it and kept himself busy for the whole day before we both got home and had a chance to talk about it.

The funeral is Saturday, and Husband and I are flying out to Indiana to be with the family. Husband was asked to prepare the obituary and give the life sketch at the funeral, and I was asked to offer the invocation. 

I had a beautiful experience on Thursday evening, the night before MIL died. I got home from work and flipped on a Korean drama I have been slowly watching whenever I have a moment. After a few minutes, however, I felt like I should turn it off, so I did. I pulled out my book, instead, and started reading. Suddenly, a peaceful, calm feeling overcame me, and I knew my MIL was in the room with me. I couldn't see her or anything, but I felt her spirit. We had a conversation during which she told me how much love she has for me and then expressed her love for her son, my husband. I could also feel her love for our children and my grandchildren as well as for all of her other children and grandchildren. It wasn't a conversation in the sense that we shared words in an audible way, but there were telepathic words that were loaded with thoughts and feelings. Lastly, she let me feel her shining love for her husband, my FIL, and her gratitude to him for the life they have had together and for his loving care as she was ill. Finally, I knew that she had delivered the message she wanted me to have and to share, and the feeling of her presence faded. Her last words were, "We will all be together again soon enough," accompanied by a sense of eternity and joy.

At the time of her visit to me, MIL had been sleeping one hundred percent of the time for about a week. She had stopped eating and drinking, and we knew the end was near. She was still alive, but I have long held the theory that people with lingering illnesses don't necessarily have to stay in their bodies all the time as the body shuts down and/or the pain becomes unbearable. I feel like they are allowed to visit loved ones or places they have a special connection to before the final separation of spirit from body. There seems to be a space of time where spirits can connect to earthly things before they pass through the veil--with my friend Mark, it was as his funeral ended that I felt a door close behind him; with Chad, my former brother-in-law, it was before the funeral but right after I heard the news of his death, as if he was waiting for me to think about him so he could make me hear him and deliver a message to my sister from him. Once he had delivered his message, I felt like he went to be with his daughters, but he never visited me again.

After that door has closed, I sense that there must be a special reason (and heavenly permission) for them to visit again. Again, this is my own theory, not gospel truth. I don't believe all spirits have a peaceful or happy passing, but I know my MIL is a being of light and love and would want to be nowhere else but as near to her Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and her parents as possible. I believe that God, in His infinite mercy and love for us, lets our spirits go where we are most comfortable as we await the final judgement, and some are not comfortable in His presence. MIL, on the other hand, would want nothing less than that glorious presence.

I kind of debated sharing that experience with Husband, wondering if he would question it or feel hurt that his mother visited me instead of him. I honestly think that it was the timing, for the most part. I was in a quiet and contemplative frame of mind, which is usually necessary in order to receive these types of spiritual messages (though I have received strong and insistent spiritual guidance in the heat of the moment when I have needed it). Husband, on the other hand, was in the whirlwind of getting students out the door and preparing his things to come home. Had I kept the TV show on, I doubt I would have noticed her presence because my mind would have been dulled and distracted. In my prior experiences of other loved ones visiting me, it has always been when I was quiet and meditative and spiritually open. 

I did end up sharing my experience with Husband, and he was grateful rather than envious. He knows I have had this happen before. The next morning, after he received news that his mother had passed away, he was able to share with his siblings and father some of the things I had told him. I know MIL wanted them to know with a surety that she is still herself, that she is happy beyond measure, and is in a beautiful, wonderful place with no pain. She is bathing in the love of God and our Savior.

We will be together again soon enough.

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

As you know, Husband is a 5th grade teacher (9- and 10-year-olds). What you might not know is that he teaches in a Dual Language Immersion (DLI) school, which has been a major factor in who, how, and what he teaches--and it has posed some very frustrating problems.

In our DLI schools, students need to be enrolled in the dual-language classes by the beginning of 2nd grade (our schools have kindergarten 4- and 5-year-olds, 1st grade 5- and 6-year-olds, and 2nd grade 6- and 7-year-olds) or they cannot be enrolled. The DLI classes spend half their day in English instruction classes and half their day in the other language instruction with a fluent dual-language or native language speaker as a teacher. 

For the DLI kids, it's an awesome program. The students in DLI most often have attentive and proactive parents, so the students are generally better behaved, better educated, and expect more of themselves. The class sizes are small as well, with about 15-20 students per class. As the students age and move up in grade, some students move out of the area or drop out of DLI classes, which decreases the class size permanently because, after the beginning of 2nd grade, no new students can enter the DLI program. With small class sizes and generally brighter students, each student enjoys more individualized attention, and the teachers have a good experience and are easily able to manage and teach the classes. Parents with DLI students are very vocal about keeping the DLI programs in the schools.

For non-DLI kids, however, the program has led to some negative unintended consequences. Students who move in after the start of 2nd grade or who drop out of the DLI program are shunted to the regular classes. With all the growth in our area, regular classes have become huge--often with 30+ students and counting as more apartment complexes and single-family homes are built. Limited numbers of teachers in each grade also means that students with behavior issues or special needs can't be easily distributed across classes to make classroom management easier. Brighter students must try to learn in an environment that is increasingly disorderly and chaotic despite teachers' efforts, and students who struggle are at an even greater disadvantage. There is no remedy for this situation except to hire more teachers, but both district budgets for teacher salaries and the lack of physical space to accommodate more classes almost always prevents this. 

The result of all of this is that our burg's elementary schools are now offering a two-tiered education experience: one small group gets an excellent education and becomes fluent in another language; and the other, much larger, group suffers in all areas. Case in point: Husband's DLI class a couple years ago passed as proficient 60% or more of the students in all areas of standardized testing. Last year, his massive non-DLI class that he tried very hard to teach in the same way as the DLI kids passed as proficient only 19% at the most in standardized testing. You can imagine his frustration.

Knowing that they needed to change something, Husband suggested to his two fellow 5th grade non-DLI colleagues that they try a junior high/high school model approach in their grade, where students move to different classrooms for different subjects rather than stay in one classroom with one teacher all day. The three non-DLI 5th grade teachers each chose two specialty areas that they would teach. Husband chose to teach math and social studies. The other two teachers divided up science, language arts, writing, and reading between them. That way, each of them could concentrate and focus better at making lesson plans for two subjects rather than trying to create effective lesson plans in all subjects. Additionally, each of them would only have each class for one-third of the day rather than all day. 

Over the summer, Husband did hours and hours of research on his own time. His math teaching model was obviously not working for non-DLI students, so he honed in on a different approach--a pretty radical approach compared to what has become the norm in public schools. This new approach is based on the research of Peter Liljedahl in his book, Building Thinking Classrooms. The goal is to teach students how to think and problem solve rather than show them a formula, have them work through it and then do some homework.

Liljedahl's research in how to structure a classroom and how to teach students to problem solve set all your normal public school education experience on its head. Husband really liked Liljedahl's method and set up his classroom to reflect it.

First, he did away with a front and back of the classroom. Where students normally sit at desks and look to the front for teacher instruction, Husband made groups of three desks each surrounding a table in the center of the room from which students could collect the supplies they would need for each lesson. Around the perimeter, Husband attached vertical whiteboards and dry erase markers to the walls. 

Each day as the students come in, they are seated randomly in groups. They really only use the desks to drop their stuff as their groups are then assigned to a set of whiteboards. Husband then presents them with a problem, and the students have to work together to solve it. No one is allowed to go and sit at a desk. Each of the three participants of each group must participate in some way, whether writing on the board or making suggestions for the solution. The groups can look at other groups' whiteboards or ask other groups about their possible solutions. Husband patrols the room to help guide the students by either giving hints or asking questions to help the students move toward the solution. He never tells them directly if they are on the right path or if they have the correct answer; instead, he challenges them to prove to him that they have found the best solution by walking him through their thought processes.

One of the questions he posed is this: a farmer needs to build a fence as cheaply as possible around his garden in order to keep animals out. The fence must be three feet wider than the 14' by 11' garden to allow movement around the garden plot, and it must include a three-foot gate. The farmer can buy any combination of 10' fence panels, 2' panels, or 1' panels in order to achieve this (the prices of the panels were given to the students). 

The other day, Husband handed me one of the problems he had developed and wanted me to work through it to see if he had done it well enough to be understandable. The concept he is trying to teach is place value. Then he watched me intently while I worked through the solution, which was nerve-wracking because I am really not sure if I'm smarter than a 5th grader. Fortunately, I was able to come up with the correct solution. Then he handed me an extension to the problem, and, again, I managed to come up with the correct solution. I am inordinately pleased by this. I still feel a little rush of pleasure when I think about how I was able to solve it--and I'm in my 50s. I have never been good at math. Imagine how great a 5th grader will feel when they work with their group members to figure it out! Imagine those kids now feeling like maybe they're smart enough to do math, which, for many, is a breaking point.

The Jewelry Heist

A jewelry store had a break-in and lost some inventory. They lost between $1 million and $2 million dollars' worth of stones.

1. They lost twice as many emeralds as they did cubic zirconias.

2. They lost the same number of rubies as they did amethyst stones, and the combined amount adds up to make a double-digit number.

3. For one type of stone, only one was stolen.

4. The number of stolen agates plus the number of stolen diamonds is equal to 6, but more agates were stolen than diamonds.

5. When the total dollars lost was calculated, the last three digits added up to make 12, and the first three digits added up to make 8. 

6. Each stone type had fewer than 7 stones stolen.

7. The lowest-value stone had three times the number stolen than the highest-value stone.

Values:

Cubic Zirconias: $1 each

Agates: $10 each

Amethysts: $100 each

Emeralds: $1000 each

Rubies: $10,000 each

Diamonds: $100,000 each

Pink diamonds: $1,000,000 each

Find out how many of each stone was stolen. What value does each stone category have? What is the total value? 

(I put the answer at the bottom of this post. Don't peek until you work through this! If I can do it, you can do it.)

Once you have solved that, here's the extension:

When the jewels were found, the pink diamond had been cut in half, and its value was now only half as much as originally. Half of the emeralds were still missing, and all the rubies had vanished. Of the remaining jewels, each had lost 1 of their original number.

How many of each stone is left? What value does each stone category now have? What is the total value? 

I am very proud of Husband. School started a couple weeks ago, and he has been helping the students become familiar and comfortable with this method of problem solving and thinking. This means he is on his feet walking around to help student groups all day, but he feels it is worth it.

My oldest grandson, Tyler, is a new kindergartner. He loves school. Husband takes him in the morning, and Siân drives the younger two boys to pick him up in the afternoon. Because of parent demand, the school had to create four all-day kindergartens, and Siân was a little worried about that at first, but Tyler seems to be thriving.

Answers:

The Jewelry Heist. Number of stolen stones: 3 cubic zirconias, 4 agates, 5 amethysts, 6 emeralds, 5 rubies, 2 diamonds, and 1 pink diamond were stolen. The value of each stolen stone category: $3 cubic zirconias; $40 agates; $500 amethysts; $6000 emeralds; $50,000 rubies; $200,000 diamonds; $1,000,000 pink diamonds. Total value: $1,256,543.

Extension: Number of stones left: 2 cubic zirconias; 3 agates; 4 amethysts; 1 diamond; 0 rubies; 3 emeralds; and 0 pink diamonds. Value of each stone category: $500,000 pink diamonds; $3000 emeralds; $0 rubies; $100,000 diamonds; $400 amethysts; $30 agates; and $2 cubic zirconias. Total value: $603,432

It's Only Cute When the Baby Is Chubby

I've been on this eating roller coaster enough times to know what's up: when I eat very few carbs, I feel good. When I eat sugars and junk, I feel bad. 

That seems pretty obvious, right? Well, I constantly learn the hard way, but only because when I'm the one in charge of cooking for everyone, it's a lot easier to get lazy or distracted or busy and make an excuse for eating what I know does not work for me but is tasty. 

In the run-up to Elannah's wedding, I fell off the wagon again. When I eat carby foods, I crave carbs and don't feel satiated, and unless I'm completely dedicated and have steel-hard self will, I sink further and further into the morass of delicious decadence. That will be me in Dante's third circle of Hell unless I sort myself out. Say hi on your tour of the inferno! 

Fortunately, I have noted the major changes to my mental and physical health, and this knowledge helps me get back to making better choices. In a nutshell, sugar and refined carbs almost immediately put me into a state of depressed ennui and lethargy. On the other hand, eating low-carb or dirty keto puts me into a state of mental agility, optimism, and better physical stamina. If only it was easy to always do the right thing.

In other news, school is starting. Summer is over. For the faculty introduction portion of our welcome-back assembly, Kim has requested that we each send him several pictures of interesting things we did this summer along with our favorite Taylor Swift song as a walk-up song. It's a joke, obviously, except for Josh, who might just be a real Swifty. I have no idea which song to pick or how to send photos of myself that do not exist.

A few pictures:

This little boy is almost three months old already! He is also a chatterbox, which is even more adorable. What I love is how many kisses can fit on those acres of chubby little cheeks.

Pardon the unsightly boxes still on the floor, but this corner of my bedroom used to be a real mess with all my crafting stuff. All of that stuff has since been moved to my new craft room, which used to be Elannah's bedroom, and Husband has installed a slouchy, dark blue leather club chair in the new reading corner. It looks moodier and has more ambience in person, of course, especially when the curtains are drawn at night. 

Gary (left) recently turned 16, so we took him, his long-time friend Molly (in the middle), and his buddy from up the street, JJ (on the right), to an arcade and then lunch in The Big City. Gary was making a funny face here and will be devastated if he ever finds out I posted this photo in my blog. He also needs a haircut, the hippy. 

I must go. I've got a full evening of photoshopping myself into photos of interesting summer activities ahead of me. Also listening to the full anthology of Taylor Swift's songs. Pray for me.

A Wedding and a Funeral

 It's been a wild and crazy ride.

The happy news is that Elannah's and Dalton's wedding went perfectly. The sealing (marriage for time and all eternity) at the temple was in the late morning, and that ordinance was absolutely lovely. I really enjoyed that part. It was everything else that was stressful: decorating the reception venue, worrying that I was going to run out of food before the reception even officially started, and then cleaning up at the end of the night when all I wanted to do was soak my aching feet before crawling into bed. In the end, however, we all survived and the happy new couple were able to embark on a honeymoon cruise. I have now married off all four of my daughters and will happily allow my sons' future brides to take the reins on their own wedding plans.

Elannah and Dalton at the Capitol building for pre-wedding bridal photos. 

They are a very compatible couple. Elannah picked a great guy. Dalton chose the perfect girl for him.

 Sophia, another of my very talented daughters, made the bouquet.

Isn't my girl so pretty? The sleeves that Sophia made turned out so well, and Elannah felt beautiful in her beautiful dress. Her photo session also entertained some groups of tourists from various countries who were visiting the Utah State Capitol that day.

Elannah wore my MIL's blue earrings that she was gifted during our visit to MIL and FIL in May. Because these photos were taken before the wedding, Elannah was able to send them to MIL and FIL while MIL was still in good enough health to appreciate them.

Fortunately, a woman in our ward who used to be a large events planner graciously offered the free use of any of her large collection of venue decor. She also brought our selections to the venue and instructed the groomsmen we offered up as minions in how to set it all up. That evening, after the reception was over, she came back and helped us pack everything back into the correct tote boxes. She saved us probably hundreds of dollars, and the decor was beautiful. I don't have the wedding photos back yet, but I will share some of them when I get them.

In less joyous news, my brother-in-law's wife tragically passed away after a brief illness. 

I've written about Husband's oldest brother, Warren, before. He's a character, to say the least. He and his wife, while legally married, had not been living as man and wife for years, though they shared a house because neither of them could afford to live alone. They have two sons, both of whom are now adults. The younger of the two boys lived with Warren and Julie.

I only met Julie, Warren's wife, two times. The first time was back in 1995 when Husband and I were living in Wales with my MIL and FIL for the summer. Julie, Warren's then-fianceé, who had attended one of the few Welsh language-only schools in western Wales, had such a strong Welsh accent that it took me about an hour after meeting her before I could finally understand her, though she was speaking English. When my brain finally caught up to how she was pronouncing her vowels, I was able to have a much better conversation with her. She was quiet and unassuming but had a good sense of humor and seemed very kind. 

The last time I saw Julie was this past January when Husband's family met up in England. 

Julie is the short blond in the front row. Warren is behind his mother (MIL wearing a blue coat and cap), and Warren's and Julie's two boys are behind Julie to her right. From left to right: Husband, Toby (Matt's son), Brad, Matt, Daniel, Ronan, Corrie, Julie, MIL, Warren, and FIL. Marlborough High Street, England, 2023. 

 

Julie was again very quiet and unassuming, and we didn't get much of a chance to chat that day as we all ended up splitting into smaller groups to visit the various shops on the high street in Marlborough. I was impressed with Ronan, however, who, seeing that his mother had worn too thin of a coat to block the cold and blustery wind, immediately removed his own coat and insisted his mother put it on. 

Around the beginning of June, Julie ended up with a very serious and exceedingly painful blood clot in her thigh. She had also recently been to the doctor for a foot injury (dry gangrene), which was exacerbated by her mostly untreated diabetes. Over the course of the next few weeks, Julie's health deteriorated rapidly.  The medical system completely failed her, though Warren tried very hard to get her into a doctor, to be admitted to a hospital, and to get necessary tests done. For weeks, hospitals kept sending her home, telling her to get scans and take pain medications, and clinics kept canceling appointments for scans and tests due to lack of staffing. She got more and more ill, to the point that she could not walk, could not eat, and could not move. She was finally admitted to a hospital only after Warren's repeated and more adamant demands for a nursing visit revealed that her foot wound had progressed to possible sepsis and she was nearly at death's door because of the blood clot.

After Julie was finally given a bed at the hospital, Warren talked to her on the phone once before he had to go to his twelve-hour night shift. Julie told him she was being given IV antibiotics for the infection and fluids for the malnutrition and dehydration. When he called again the next day, after his shift, she didn't answer. He called a couple more times with no response before calling the hospital. After being shunted to three different departments as the medical staff tried to find where Julie was, a nurse finally spoke to him.

"Julie is in the ICU and has not yet regained consciousness after the surgery," she told Warren.

"What surgery?" asked Warren, surprised and alarmed.

"...Who are you?" responded the nurse.

After Warren had proven he was Julie's husband, the nurse apologized that he had not been informed that Julie had been taken in for emergency surgery to have her leg amputated. They had it on record that someone had called him, though no one had. The nurse also informed Warren that Julie's heart, greatly weakened from the illness and weight loss, had stopped during the surgery, though the doctor had managed to get it started again.

Julie remained unconscious, and Warren, even more alarmed, asked the stake president to come and give her a blessing because Warren's faith has taken a major hit due to MIL's illness with cancer. During the blessing, the stake president said that Julie was between worlds and had been given the choice to either come back to mortality, where she would not only endure having to navigate with one leg but would have vascular disease for the rest of her life, or to stay in heaven, where her faith had saved her and her mansion had been prepared. Either way, she had been assured that her family would be loved and supported. She obviously chose to remain in the beautiful world of spirits because another heart attack a day or two later ended her life on this earth for good. She never regained consciousness.

I can't guarantee that Julie would have survived if she had access to the American medical system, flawed as our system is, but I'm pretty sure she would have. She might even have kept her leg. For all its faults, a private medical system has distinct advantages over socialized healthcare. I won't politicize this tragedy any more than to say that knowing what I know about this situation (and I have spared you all the minute details), it is my strong opinion that socialized healthcare killed Julie. It was a series of mistakes and bunglings inherent to that system that added up to an unnecessary death.

Equally sad is that my MIL does not have long with us, either. She is sleeping most of the time, and the amount of pain medications she has to take does not allow her to be fully lucid for much of the time that she is awake. A day or two ago, she had to go to the ER because her catheter had an issue. They solved the catheter issue and then put her in a rehabilitation center for a few days mainly to give FIL some time to rest. I don't know if MIL has stopped eating or drinking, but I think that is probably the next and final stage. 

It is a blessing to know that Julie is happy in the Spirit World even if her sons are grieving the loss of their mother. They will be with her again. It is a blessing to know that MIL will also be welcomed home with joy and love. As I watch Elannah and Dalton begin their new lives as a new family, I am so grateful that they they are sealed together forever. Death is part of life, but life can be joyful, too.