Jellystone Park

"I forgot the camera."

Those are the words I said to Cathy yesterday as we left the city limits of Tulsa, and that's why you won't see pictures of us with John & Sheri at Jellystone Park Camp in Eufaula, Oklahoma. But I'm not sure we would have gotten that many pictures anyway... we spent most of the day in the water, and our little snapshot camera is most definitely not waterproof!

We didn't go to camp... you can pick up a day pass for ten bucks apiece and use the facilities for the whole day without spending a night. John & Sheri had discovered the place somehow, and we had a GREAT time with them. Mikey and Hannah loved the pool (Hannah was wearing a floating suit, so she even got to go in the "deep end"... a whopping five feet!), and after we had splashed around there for a while (and got to dance the Macarena and the chicken dance and eat free ice cream... POOL PARTY!!!), we went on down to the lake swimming area, where the water gets a little deeper and where they have paddle boats, kayaks, a huge inflatable water slide and a smaller plastic slide, and a trampoline right out there in the lake. Awesome! Mikey and Sheri snagged a paddle boat while John and I swam out to the water slide, and they promptly ran over a life jacket which was floating in the water (presumably whoever had been in the jacket was on the shore somewhere and it blew out into the lake... I hope!) and so it was almost impossible to paddle the thing. Crazy! Hannah wasn't liking the muddy water, so she and Cathy went back to the pool. John and I went down the water slide, forgetting that unless you want muddy water up your sinuses, you should hold your nose when you go down a monster slide into the lake!

So anyway, we joined Mikey and Sheri on the paddle boat and managed to get back to shore. Sheri joined Cathy at the pool while Mikey snagged a kayak. Mikey and John and I went out to the trampoline; we discovered that a trampoline on water is a weird thing. The water absorbs some of the bounce, so it's a lot harder to jump. So we didn't jump for very long!

We joined the girls back at the pool and splashed a little longer, then we dried off and took a break to go across the street to Watts' Barbecue, a restaurant which is apparently somewhat legendary and which is owned by the family of former U.S. Representative J. C. Watts. It was good stuff! Afterward we went back to the campground and tried out the mini-golf course, but it was really hot and except for Mikey, who finished the whole course without us, our hears weren't particularly in it... the grown-ups and Hannah quit halfway through. :)

They have tent sites and cabins out there, and it would be a GREAT place to camp out! We may yet do that sometime, but the day pass was a great, inexpensive day with family and friends. Despite using waterproof sunscreen, each of us wound up with varying levels of sunburn... but we all had a great time!

We love you, Theresa.

Yesterday morning, Cathy called me at work. "We need to get up to the hospital to see Theresa," she said. Theresa Angel is Cathy's brother's wife; Cathy and she actually knew each other at church a few years before she met his brother, and we didn't even all make the connection until later. In recent months Cathy and Theresa had started to become even closer friends than they had been before, and Theresa had declared that she intended to treat our children like the grandma they lost three years ago would treat them if she were still with us. Theresa had liver disease, diagnosed many years ago, and she's been on a liver transplant waiting list for over a year and a half. Early Monday morning she had gone into the emergency room with bruises all over her body, and Tuesday mid-morning Cathy's brother, Theresa's husband Kevin, had called her and told her to come quickly.

We didn't get there quickly enough. When we got to St. Francis Hospital, Cathy spent a few minutes talking to someone at a nurse's station, and then she came back to where I was (I was trying to keep the kids entertained while we were waiting), Cathy said simply, "She's gone." She pointed at the ceiling. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You mean, gone gone?" I asked. Theresa had died mere minutes before we arrived.

We were crushed. We went up to the floor where the family was and spent some time with them, then we went downstairs to the lobby to wait with Kevin for his son David. Meanwhile the word was getting out, and my mom, who is a friend of Cathy's family in addition to being related by marriage, came up to give Kevin a hug of condolence and to take my kids off our hands and to McDonald's. Cathy and I stayed a little longer, and then after making sure Kevin was taken care of (his son was going home with him), we got in the car to leave; there was no reason to hang around the hospital any more. "Do you want to go home, or do you want to just drive?" I asked Cathy. She didn't know what she wanted to do, so I selected the "just drive" option.

These days it's really hard to drive around Tulsa without going somewhere that holds painful memories. Cathy's dad passed away not quite two weeks ago, so parts of town that are associated in our minds with him are still very much an open wound. And now parts of town that we associate with Theresa can be added to that list. To make it worse, there is so much street work going on in Tulsa right now that it can be a struggle to drive anywhere (don't get me wrong... the streets need it! But it's hard on motorists). I wound up heading out to Peoria and then down to Riverside, then I took Riverside out past Jenks to where it curves and becomes 131st Street. I knew that stretch would give me a chance to "just drive" for a few minutes without dodging any construction barrels, facing any stop lights or signs, or fighting any traffic. My brother's wife Candi called Cathy on her cell phone, and they chatted for a few minutes, which was good for Cathy.

I didn't talk much. I felt numb. In addition to the death of Cathy's dad two weeks ago, we dealt with the death of my grandpa a month and a half before that. I've been strong and brave through all of those losses (and don't even make me mention the loss of Cathy's mother... grandmother... cousin... aunt... these all occurred within the past 4 or 5 years) ...but it starts to wear on you. I felt tired. I felt like a boxer must feel in the seventh or eighth round of a fight where he's getting the snot pounded out of him. It's not the first blow that gets you, or the second, or even the third, but when you start piling them up on top of each other, especially in such rapid succession... it's enough to wear the strongest man out.

We got to 131st and Memorial, and I turned left. Our church, The Bridge in Bixby, was just up at 121st and Memorial, and I thought there might be a chance that someone was there. Sure enough, Pastors Orlando and Kim were there, and Associate Pastor David, and they knew already (Orlando and Kim were friends with Theresa from her Grace Fellowship days, and Orlando had even performed in Kevin & Theresa's wedding). We walked in, and we were immediately covered with love and compassion. It was like someone putting a warm, comfy blanket on you when you're freezing cold; I think they helped to steady us both just by being themselves and loving us. They asked us what had happened and we filled in some of the blanks for them, and then they prayed for us and for our children, that we would be strengthened and that particularly Mikey wouldn't become fearful since all of those people he is close to have been going away all of a sudden. Orlando seemed startled to see me so distracted and a bit teary; I guess I generally control the way I act so well that people don't often see me getting truly emotional. So they don't know what a crybaby I truly am sometimes. :) Anyway, after receiving a couple of CDs of recent messages from Kim, we left there feeling quite a bit better.

We weren't far from Kevin's house in south Broken Arrow by this time, and since Kim had asked us to give one of the CDs to Kevin, we decided to go on out to his house and deliver it right away. When we got there, Kevin's car wasn't in the driveway, but we were surprised to see our great friend John Teeples walk around from the back. John and his wife Sheri have a lawn service, and they had been cutting Kevin & Theresa's grass. We got out of the car and told John the news; he was so shocked he dropped his weed eater. We walked around the back and shared it with Sheri also, then we all stayed put for a few minutes and talked about Theresa, and then just about "stuff" for a bit. It was so helpful, so therapeutic, to have real, true friends to help us get our feet back rooted in reality again. The whole experience had been so surreal that we needed someone to help ground us. Kevin got home and Cathy gave him the CDs, and then we said good-bye to John and Sheri and left, again feeling MUCH better after receiving the love and caring of friends.


Theresa was a WONDERFUL lady. She was amazing. Many of the people who knew her who are on Facebook commented on her beautiful singing voice, but for me, that was almost the least of the wonderful things about her. She had a huge personality; she could fill a room with joy or compassion or whatever else was appropriate to the situation. She had the biggest laugh; not loud and obnoxious, but full and hilarious, welcoming you in on the joke even if you had just walked in and had no idea what was going on. She genuinely cared about people; not just family members, but pretty much anyone who came into her circle of influence. I can't imagine Theresa ever excluding people from her life because of social class, race, appearance, language. She enjoyed life, family, and friends. When Linda and then Don died, Theresa was so concerned that we all were there emotionally for each other; this time we have to remember to be there for each other without her prompting (fortunately, apparently she trained us well!) Her daughters are all beautiful young ladies, and though they may or may not believe what I'm saying if they read this, I can see in each of them echoes of their mother's classiness. They're not just attractive physically, although they are that; they are all also top-quality women with high standards for themselves and respect for others. Theresa used to brag about them so much to us behind their backs! She loved them and her husband so much. We started missing her the second she was gone.

Here's her obituary in the Tulsa World.

Kevin & Theresa in 2007, visiting us in the hospital after Hannah was born

brains

This afternoon, our friend Jimmy had brain surgery.

You heard me right! Last week, his wife Christy, who is one of Cathy's best friends, found him unconscious at home. She finally got him in to see the doctor, and they found out that he was bleeding slowly inside his skull and he had a brain aneurysm. This was at the start of Labor Day weekend, so since he was in no immediate danger as long as he was under observation at the hospital, they scheduled an exploratory procedure for Tuesday. They discovered the aneurysm during this procedure, and scheduled a surgery to clamp it off for today, Wednesday. Usually we go to church on Wednesday with choir practice after, and we were hoping for the surgery to be over by that time, but as it turned out it took longer than that and we missed the whole service and the rehearsal! BUT: the important thing is that Jimmy came through the surgery with flying colors; the doctor told Christy that things couldn't have gone better. It was pretty close to ten p.m. when we finally got to see Jimmy; he was still seriously drugged up but we spoke to him in case he could hear us, and then we went to pick up the kids from Meme's house.

It was great that Cathy was able to be there for most of the day; there were a couple of times that Christy really needed someone for support, and Cathy was able to be that friend for her.

Thank you, God, for taking care of Jimmy today!