CHANGED LIVES

CHANGED LIVES

On Friday, December 3, 1981 our lives changed forever. We had worked all day with the corn dryer, kind of finishing up on the corn harvest.

I had to leave home to get Nola from her Sioux Vocational apartment in Sioux Falls. When we arrived back at home Dick and Marie were there. I wondered what was going on. (Later I learned that Eddie had called them.) I soon found out: my husband was having a stroke. He was acting kind of strange – talking not quite right and complaining about pain in his eye. I called the ambulance and we were off to the hospital. I seem to recall him having another stroke later that night.

I stayed with him all night and also the next several days. Duane and Faye came the next day as did Dale and Ken. He remained in the hospital for three weeks. Finally he could come home – barely able to walk and he couldn’t talk.

He partially recovered from the severe stroke. We kept trying to find help for him: physical therapy, speech therapy, chiropractic sessions and even going to Kansas City for “chelation therapy” which also didn’t seem to help. He never regained much of his speech with many guessing games on my part to try to understand what he was saying. He walked with a limp, but at least he was able to get around and take care of himself. I became the official driver of the vehicles we owned.

August 21, 1984 our farm sale was held on a beautiful fall day. Wonderful help came from family, neighbors and friends. We were sad to see our precious things go. We had worked so hard for them, but Eddie could not handle the farming operations that he had worked for all of his life, most of the time by himself. Of course, the boys helped with the animal chores and tractor work when they were home. Faye often did tractor work too. She learned to handle that hay baler very well, as well as other machinery.

     

 The crowd at the sale

Lines of Machinery and the crowd at the The Auction Sale on August 21, 1984

In 1984 we found a year-old house in Lennox for sale and we bought it. We moved in September of 1984 after our farm sale.

Home ownership is the “pitts” sometimes! Always something to replace or repair. After only 16 years in this house the shingles had to be replaced; the siding was peeling and looked bad. A good salesman came along and I signed on the dotted line to have siding replaced with steel siding. I also had the garage door replaced with a steel insulated door. I was thankful then that I had the resources to do this. All the hard work over the years paid off.

Since we had this big house, we always have room for guests of any number at any time. We enjoyed guests even though Eddie could not visit as well as he would have liked. Even at this date I enjoy having company any time.

The house we bought was larger than the one we would have built… I had always wanted a big house, although after we added to the farm house, it was great. Our new big house had room enough for everyone and everything. There were three bedrooms on the main floor and two in the basement. One of the basement rooms soon because my sewing room. Wonderful! I don’t have to clean up if I don’t want to. The house had a wood burning fireplace that I later had converted to gas-fired, using money that I inherited from Mom’s estate. At that same time a new living room carpet was added.

Since we were moving to a larger home I didn’t dispose of too much stuff. Some years after Eddie died, I went through every check he or I had ever written out, even my school teaching checks. I disposed of nearly all of them except some that had paid for big ticket items – like hospital checks that said we had paid for our babies. I wish I had saved all of them, but who knew I would ever write my life history?