A Tender Quiet Night

 

Allan about 9 years ago at their last set of family photos
before Valerie passed away in 2013

Around 10 pm (November 1), we noticed we had missed a call from the Hospice nurse who worked with Allan.  She indicated that Allan was not doing well and to call her if we had questions.  Shortly after that, Chris Page called and said that he was with Allan because he had received the same call and just wanted to make sure we knew that Allan was declining.

Of course over the past few years we had heard that a few times.  We were glad that Chris and Jen were there and asked them to keep us updated through the night if needed.  Chris's brother, Matt, was actually in town on business and he was going to come over for a few hours that night as well. We finished our bedtime routine and got in bed.  Chris called back about 10:30 and said that the hospice nurse felt like Allan was getting close but it could be a day or two.  We thought we would get some sleep and go up in the morning.

About 10:50, I got up and told Gary we needed to go up then to be with Allan and Chris.  He hopped out of bed and we left Jena a note and headed up to Clearfield to Chancellor Gardens where Allan has lived in a memory care unit since Valerie (Gary's sister) had passed away in 2013. We then stayed with Allan until he passed away in the early morning hours.  He was really not aware of anything during the time we were there.  It was just right to be there with Chris and Matt--to share memories and for Allan to not be alone.  That is one thing I didn't want to happen and I was grateful that it was possible for us to be there that night.  It ended up being a very long night as we waited for the mortuary service to come and get his body.  It took about 3-4 hours.  (We found out later that the person who was called fell back asleep and woke up 2 hours later.  Staff said he was very embarrassed about that. Oh, well, stuff happens.)  We got back to Salt Lake in time to arrange our assistants to run the devotional and to catch a bit of sleep before heading back to Syracuse to make the arrangements at the funeral home.

It was somewhat surreal to be sitting in a funeral home so soon after my dad had passed away and also the loss of Karla's mom.  With his children (who live in Oregon) on the phone, we made the needed decisions and started the planning for the funeral. This was Wednesday afternoon and the decision was to do the funeral on Friday because that would work best for his children, Heidi and Cory who were flying in on Thursday.  It wasn't until a few hours later that Gary was like "Wait, today is Wednesday.  We can't do a funeral on Friday."  But, although it was a crazy few days for us, it did come together and we had a sweet funeral on Friday morning with family and some old friends stopping in.

Details in the following posts.