Extended Family

This past week I was able to take five days out of life and return to my extended family. I was born in Minnesota and raised in Illinois. My grandmother (middle) is 90 years old and still lives in the house where I visited her as a child. My mother has been ill and has not been able to see her mother and so this week my brother Brian and I decided that we wanted them to have an opportunity to be together. So. . . I flew to Minnesota on Monday morning, rented a car, and Brian flew in on Wednesday with my mom (right).
This is my beautiful mother, brother Brian and me. We were saying goodbye after visiting with my aunts and uncles for three days.
Brian has to add humor so that the tears don't roll :). It was so good to see him for a few days and now he is off to Arizona again.
This is a photo of my grandmother Ellouise Marie Parrish with all of her grown children. From left to right is Carol, Rodney, Faye, Marjorie, Crystal, Leonard. She also gave birth to Diane and Mitchell who died in their infancy. It was so fun to watch these brothers and sister interact with each other. As we sat around the dinner table one evening, I asked my grandma if it reminded her of the days when they were younger and she said yes. They were all expected to be home for dinner together. That is what Kerry and I have done with our children and I reflected on what it will be like when I am 90 and all of my kids come home to see each other. I cried that evening thinking about what life has brought me and where we will be in another 45-50 years.

Once a mother, always a mother! I love this photo because the first day was really hard on my mom. She has a new feeding tube and she was pretty distraught to visit her family. She tried to rest and couldn't. She tried to sit and visit and couldn't. She tried to walk around the house and couldn't seem to. It was very tender for me to watch my grandma try to "mother" my mom and take care of her. She decided to try to lay down with her to see if she would nap. They both ended up falling asleep for a few minutes. Another opportunity of this trip was to visit with my dad Chuck Markowitz and his sister, my Aunt Sue. My cousin Kathy also made the trip to come and see us. We had lunch together and visited but the batteries were dead in my camera and unfortunately I didn't get any photos.

This was a short, but special trip for me. I was taken care of so well by so many people. All of my aunts and uncles were concerned for us and brought food each day. Grandma doesn't cook by herself a lot these days and so each day, each of the family would bring some food and come to visit and eat with us. Most of them are farmers and have children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of their own and it was a huge sacrifice for them to come to grandma's each day and visit. When they left in the evening they had to return home to bottle beans, bail hay, weed gardens, and tend to the responsibilities of their lives to return the next morning with a smile on their face and a tight hug to begin again. I am sure they were relieved when we left to get back to their normal lives. . . but they were WONDERFUL to me and to my mom and I am grateful!!