Laura’s Story, Part 4

Christine Scott

My name is Christine Scott. I’m a forty-six-year-old mother of five children and I grew up with a mentally disabled sister. In my first segment of Laura’s Story, I recounted her birth and slow development. In Part 2, I told about the impact of her seizures and Part 3, I told about her fight with cancer. Processing the memories and spending time reminiscing with my mother about my sister’s life is exactly what I needed—and my mom too.

 

How come when we finally get our lives into a good place, it seems like forces combine and everything falls apart? At least this is how I used to feel before I grasped a better  understanding of adversity and how it can work in our lives for our progression.

After Laura’s recovery from cancer, life was good for my mom. Laura’s hair came back in thick and with soft waves. She gained weight and stopped catching every virus which came along. Mom’s career at Ogden Weber was blossoming. She had a support system and was learning new things every day.

Then my dad felt like it was time to have another baby. Mom didn’t agree. That ship had sailed years ago for her.

But in the end, Mom lost, Dad won, and my little brother was on his way, which put ten years’ difference in age between us. I can say I didn’t blame my mom. It was like starting over again with another new family. This meant she’d have to quit her job to take care of a newborn and she’d have to face all those what-if’s she’d experienced with Laura.

My brother, Eric, was born on September 2, 1979, a month after his due date and weighed over eleven pounds. Laura loved him. She often touched his hand and made funny faces at him.

Dad, Klaus Hill

At this time, my dad was under a tremendous amount of stress. In addition to my brother’s birth, one of his business associates was pressuring him to motorize a previous hang glider he had built. This man weighed much more than anyone who’d flown this particular hang glider before, which was making it hard to get the design right.

We were currently renting another older home, which the owner sold out from under us. There weren’t any houses for rent in Morgan, so we started looking at rentals in Ogden and my dad would make the drive to Morgan—which meant I’d have to change schools. This was the backdrop to the tragedy which struck my family.

You should have some type of warning before your life unequivocally changes so you have the chance to do things differently—to take advantage of those last moments to say “I love you” and “goodbye.”

October 10, 1979, I woke up late and feeling grouchy. I thought I had missed my bus and daddy offered to give me a ride to school, but I glanced out the living room window and saw kids still waiting in line for the bus.  So I hurried to my bus stop while my dad’s old car rattled by. I had no idea I’d never see him again, but over the years I’ve always regretted not getting that last ride to school with him.

It was during lunch I found out. I was in line getting my food—enchiladas. It’s funny how certain details stay with you for a lifetime. Two women stood at the far end of the room glancing at all the students. When I recognized my neighbor, my stomach fell.

Suzanne, my neighbor, motioned for me to come over. I wandered over, carrying my lunch tray. She told me to leave my lunch and that I was needed at home. Those were the only words she said to me, no matter how many times I asked her what was wrong. She just walked me to her car and drove me home in silence while I silently fought the urge to scream at her.

People I’d never seen before crowed into my living room. The county sheriff was there. Everyone stood like statues. I don’t remember who told me my dad had been killed while taking the glider with design flaws on a test flight. I’m assuming it was my mom. I don’t remember if she held me while I cried, but I hope she did. I don’t even remember if Laura was there. I’m thinking she might have still been at school.

Our adversities don’t define us unless we let them, but experiencing the death of a parent when you’re in your childhood changes your life. You learn the world isn’t a safe place and death is very real and can strike at any moment—a fear I’ve always carried for every person I’ve ever loved.

Laura’s disability served as a blessing for her because she didn’t understand death or “going to heaven,” which is what my mom told her every time she asked where daddy was. While alive, he was away from us so much she thought he’d simply be home in a few days. I wonder how long it took before she stopped waiting for him to come home.

I wouldn’t trade these experiences because they have made me more compassionate. I wish my kids knew their grandfather, but the trials we must pass through are not given to us by chance—every hard time in our lives has a specific purpose, a specific design. We may not understand that purpose in this life, but some day we will, and that knowledge is what keeps me going during the dark days.

Thank you, Christine, for sharing such tender and difficult memories. I love the pictures of your dad and can see the passion he had for hang gliders in the expressions on his face.  I imagine this caregiving journey for your sister took an unexpected hard turn with the passing of your dad. I look forward to your next segment and learning how you all coped. 

 

 

The Blessing of Adversity

While organizing some files, I found and read a talk Mark wrote and gave in church, November 1990, five months before our car accident. The title, The Blessing of Adversity, grabbed my attention and my heart started to pound as I read on. By the time I got to the last few paragraphs tears were flowing as I realized twenty-five years later the prophetic nature of his words. The talk is well over 2,ooo words so I decided to publish only part of the talk. I try to keep these articles around 1,000 words.

If you didn’t know my husband before the car accident, this gives insight on how he was before and you’ll see the core of his soul hasn’t changed. He is an example of enduring to the end and appreciating life and the lessons learned along the way.

Written by Mark Wilson

Many blessings are obvious. Our families, friends, homes and the country we live in are all blessings most of us recognize and are grateful for.  But I’d like to talk about some blessings that aren’t always so obvious.  You see, I believe that very few things happen in this world that aren’t blessings, even being asked to talk in church, for instance. Like many of you, I am terrified of talking in public.  While serving as ward clerk, I sat in on many a bishopric meeting, wherein the topic of discussion often was “who can we get to speak in sacrament meeting?” You know, not once did I volunteer.  Come to think of it, I don’t remember anyone else volunteering either. How can giving a talk in sacrament meeting be a blessing, you ask? Well, if you do it enough, chances are you’ll learn not to be scared. Not being afraid in front of large groups of people would be a plus, I think. You see, what I’m really talking about is adversity, or rather the opportunity to overcome it, can be a blessing. We’ve all been taught this sort of thing before. The scriptures give many examples of how people have been blessed or how we can be blessed by “enduring to the end” or overcoming adversity.

In my line of work, I have on a number of occasions had to serve as job foreman, with anywhere from one to a dozen other electricians in my charge.  Being a foreman is a job that I’ve never liked.  The raise in pay (usually a whole dollar an hour) never seemed to compensate for the added worry over doing the job right, along with the pressure of getting the job done on time. There are always problems with getting the manpower, equipment and materials you need on time.

My first experience along these lines was a real disaster. When the first phase of the new minimum security men’s facility at the state prison was built, the company I was working for at that time was contracted to wire it.  This involved not only the power and lighting systems, but also some very involved security, communications and life safety systems as well. My boss asked me to be in charge of four of the seven buildings.  Up to that time, I had had no prior experience on jobs of that nature.  In fact, I was still only an apprentice.  I consented and before I knew it, I found myself desperately trying to figure out all these systems that were my responsibility. I was reading from blueprints that were rain-faded and wind-torn because the weather was so bad. The general contractor was literally pouring concrete down our boots as we worked feverishly to stay ahead of them on the conduit work. One conduit left out or plugged with concrete would have spelled big trouble and a great deal of expense to correct.

I was so nervous and uptight that I found I couldn’t eat my lunch. I was actually sick to my stomach with worry. I couldn’t sleep at night. I was a nervous wreck. After a few weeks of this, I called my boss one night and told him I couldn’t go on. He would have to find someone else to take my place. He did and I got my sanity back, but I’ve regretted that I didn’t stick with it. What a tremendous growing experience this could have been for me had I been able to “endure to the end”.

Several years have passed since that awful prison job and I’ve been in somewhat similar circumstances a few times. Although I haven’t quit, I’ve never really gotten used to being a foreman and I avoid it all together whenever possible.

About a month ago, I was called into the office and asked to run a job. I thought, oh brother, here we go again. Next the boss starts telling me how important this job is because we’re looking forward to the people we’re working for to throw us a lot more work in the future if we perform well on this job.  That’s all I need, more pressure. One of the reasons I agreed to be the foreman was because he said we had three months to get the job done.

Shortly after I arrived on the job site, the general superintendent informed me we had three months to do the job, but that was two months ago. It took the lawyers, owners and engineers the first two months to get the paperwork done. We only have one month left!

That day, lunch was a little hard to get down. That one month is over in four more days. There’s a chance we might not finish on time. But whether we make it or not, I feel good because I managed to “endure to the end” and just did the very best that I could. The feeling that gives me is downright terrific. What a blessing trials and tribulations can be!

We’ve all had problems at one time or another that we thought at the time were insurmountable.  How did we handle it?  How about the times that we’ve given up?  How does that make us feel?  What a difference it makes when we persevere or “endure to the end” and win! Even during the times when we don’t give up and lose anyway, we still learn a valuable lesson. It’s not the end of the world! The sun will still rise the next day.

We should thank our Heavenly Father for this wonderful life He’s given us and all the problems that come with it. When we are faced with adversity, we should wipe the frowns from our faces and the tears from our eyes and with appreciation in our hearts for a God that loves us enough to test us to our very limits. With gratitude we should dive right in head first knowing that all things give experience for our good.

Note:

Scriptures and doctrine examples have been left out due to the length. If you’d like to read it in its entirety, let me know and I will email it to you. My email address: Barbara@UnitingCaregivers.com