July 14, 2009 Announcement

Today, I have added two different kinds of writings. One is a light hearted pet or animal story and the other is a Spiritual lesson from the writings of Ernest Holmes.

My blogs are not diaries of my everyday life, but are stories, some just entertainment and some are meaningful and spiritual, that I share to give something to your life.

If you get something from them, give something back - a comment or an email. I'll even discuss selling a print or a painting or take donations. I also am a LIFE COACH and will work with individuals. I love writing and sharing with my friends. I want to keep this going and to hear from you.

Katherine Ari

George and Nutmeg

George Arrives and Meets Nutmeg

by Katherine Ari                                                                                  July 14, 2009

Several years ago, we had two dogs, an alpha dog that was a six pound Maltese and a small Sheltie.  We had two cats.  One was a black, white and gray semi-long hair, the same color as our Sheltie, and the other was an orange and white Tabby marking striped male.  Both cats were neutered but Nutmeg, the orange one, was a little over 1 year old when we had took him to the vet.  He was old enough to have developed a tomcat attitude.

 

Nutmeg was outdoors during the day and he wandered around the neighborhood within a half block.  If another cat, like a tomcat, entered his “territory”, he would act like a typical tomcat asserting his dominance.  He frequently came home with scratches and bruises and swellings of unknown origin.  But it never slowed him down.  He was right back out there on the prowl the next day.

 

One day a neighbor boy came over to see one of our sons and a red-orange mixed breed dog was with him.  He was part Chow Chow, part Retriever and part ? and weighed about 39 pounds.  We guessed he was around 8 or 9 months old and he was full of personality.  The boy said he just showed up and was hanging around the neighborhood.

 

He was a very friendly and loving dog.  He just loved everyone.  But he was a Chow.  Chows around this neighborhood have a reputation of killing cats.  Chows are hunting dogs and can be overly aggressive and most of them around here are mean.  I wasn’t sure of what he would do around Nutmeg or our other more timid cat.

 

He was inside the yard with the boys.  Nutmeg had been out on his rounds but I guess sensed that there was activity going on at his house.  He sauntered back into the yard.  He wasn’t expecting a NEW dog on the premises.  Nutmeg adored the Maltese and the Sheltie loved all cats.  The visiting dog spied the cat, and he was on the chase.  Nutmeg was startled and ran for the nearest tree.  He got up out of the reach of the barking dog and stopped on a limb. “Where the H - - - did THAT come from?” was the look on his bright eyes looking down on the red dog.

 

We pulled the dog away from the tree and removed him from inside the fenced yard.  After a short while, Nutmeg came down from the tree.

 

The next day, the boy and the stray dog were again at our house. Nutmeg had been out prowling around and came back with his right eye swollen shut.  He looked kind of tough and rough.  He wasn’t in a very amiable mood to say the least.  When the dog came towards him, he just sat there, looking pirate like.  He didn’t budge, raised his right paw with his claws out, closed eye, and looked at him.  “I’m ready for you this time.  Come on Sucker!”

 

The dog was just about to him and when he realized that he wasn’t going to run this time, he kind of skidded to a stop. “I’m not sure about chasing THIS cat.  He isn’t running,” the dog’s face said.  Nutmeg took that as his opportunity to go towards the dog.  He went for his nose and slapped the dog’s face.  The next thing I saw was nine pound Nutmeg chasing 39 pound George, (he eventually was named George) across the yard slapping at his behind and tail with both paws, hissing and spitting, and scaring the dickens out of the dog.  But the dog was smiling all the time. 

 

Nutmeg ruled.  George was not a threat to the cats. He joined our family, and they got along fine.

God is The Eternal Presence of Perfection

This week, I have had contact with several friends including myself that are dealing with some serious health issues.  I love to turn Ernest Holmes in the Science of Mind to help me get a better idea.  The following comes from what he says about Tumors and Cancer on pages 234-236 but it applies to any ailment or disease.  Where there are quotations, I am quoting text by Holmes.

 

God is the Eternal Presence of Perfection

 

There is One Universal Mind we call God.  God is not a man out there in the sky.  It is a Presence that exists everywhere all the time.

“There is but One Mind and we are in it.”  Out thoughts are in it too and whatever we think goes into it and it then acts on our thoughts.  In the Native American cultures, the elders and leaders taught that every thought is a prayer.  It is not a concept that is exclusive to any religion or spiritual practice.

If we have destructive emotions, desires or ideas that are allowed to become default habits, they may grow into a bodily condition or disease.  “Disease without thought could not manifest, no matter what the disease may be.”

It doesn’t mean that the health issue arises because I am thinking about a particular ailment.  I may be constantly fearful or angry or self-critical and it manifest in my body as acne or a tumor.  Sometimes worrying about a disease like “there’s cancer in my family” can create the effect depending on how much “thought” you give the “fear”.

“Erase the thoughts of a false growth or false condition,”  Holmes says, “and the effect or manifestation will be healed.”  Declare, “Every plant which my Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.”  The “Heavenly Father” in us is the Eternal Presence and Perfection.  A false growth can be a tumor, cyst, kidney or gallstone, or even warts or acne, or it can be a chronic disease. 

I know there is nothing for these false conditions to feed upon.  Today I do not believe in anything but whole perfect and complete health.  My body has healing power!

Declare – “Divine Love within me removes from my consciousness every thought unlike God (or Good).”  God is perfection and God sustains and nourishes my body.  Everything in my body comes from this One Creative Mind.  I work with this Presence in me to create only health.  My thoughts are about great health because that is what I want.  If I think about disease or pain or false growths, I am feeding them.  I nourish and feed Perfect Health.

I eliminate any depression, misunderstandings, maladjustments, or frustrations in my life.

God is all there is and God creates the divine order.  God expresses perfection in my body and that is the only thought I allow in my mind.  God is a part of me and it “forever cleanses, heals, and renews every organ and every atom in my body after the pattern of perfection.”

I freshen my thoughts.  I have faith and trust the perfection of God in my life.  Perfect Principle produces perfect accretion in my body.

Everything is made from God’s creation.  Let it only allow that creation to work in perfect health and manifestation through my/our body.  Divine Spirit implants perfect, whole and pure health.  That is what I think about – anything else is eliminated.

Spirit in me is perfectly and completely manifest.  Every shadow of erroneous conclusions is wiped out. I focus on the Truth which sustains vitality.

I know that when there is pain or other symptoms because of these things going on it is hard to keep our thoughts on this perfect health.   I met a lady one time who got rid of her migraines by saying, “God doesn’t get migraines.”  I say over and over, “God doesn’t experience pain.  This pain is NOT God.”  My faith is strong.  I know this is true.  If I dwell on pain or discomfort, I feed it.  I feed “God doesn’t have any pain.”  The pain goes away. 

These thoughts end with my gratitude and thankfulness for my health and vitality.  I then release these Truths and know they are the thoughts working through my body.  And so it is.

Believe in Yourself and Believe in Others

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF AND BELIEVE IN OTHERS
by Katherine Ari July 12, 2009

My children are ages 21 to 27. I work with teenagers at my spiritual center. Because of this I have many teens and young adults in and out of my home and my life all the time. I love it. I love seeing them as they unfold their talents and futures as the next adults running the world. They have so much knowledge, talents, and new perceptions.

It is sad when other adults discount the youth. They see them doing things that are “weird” or wearing strange clothes and bucking the established system. But it has always been a natural thing for the next generation to do things differently. They get to the age they desire autonomy from their parents. They strike out and seek to find a way to be different from their parents. Some parents have forgotten and try to exert more control. “You have to be in control,” another parent told me one time.

“Why?” Why should I think as a parent that I should control their bodies and minds and force them to see things through my eyes. When I say this, it doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize that their brains are still growing and forming. They still need guidance and limits. Sometimes it as simple as telling them their brains are still growing, but I must recognize they have their own way of thinking.

It’s kind of like coaching a soccer team that I did many years ago. When we were at practice that was the time to teach them how to play the game. When we played the games that was the time to rely on what they learned at practice – but as children, there was always more to learn. We adults have to know when to teach and when to shut up. Being a parent is not controlling – it is teaching and loving.

One of the things I heard was children not believing in themselves. “Oh, I can’t score. They would get mad at me.” “I’m afraid.” The thing that many coaches and parents alike don’t realize is that when you don’t believe in the abilities of the child, they know it. When you have little chats about this child or that child, they know it. They feel it. I heard another teen counselor making “poor ugly child” comments about a boy that was actually in her family at camp. She was in her mid-thirties and did not have children herself. Inside I was screaming, “Don’t you know that if you feel that way about him that he feels it!” It was an overheard conversation and not the time or place to try to tell her.

It is just that they know without knowing why they know. It is important as adults that we never, never say or think anything negative about a child, because they feel it if we do and it becomes their self-worth, self-esteem, and their core belief – all false ideas. If you don’t believe in yourself, ask yourself where does that idea come from? It is usually someone else’s idea and NOT the TRUTH.

Mini-Spiritual Mind Treatment - #7

Abundance p. 164 (Science of Mind -Ernest Holmes)
by Katherine Ari

The Creative Force of the Universe produces perfect health, abundance, happiness, peace.

The Creative Energy is in me and works through me as much as I believe in it.

I believe and recognize these things are mine and always have been, always will.

Anything unhealthy, lack, sorrowful or unpeaceful is not the essence of the Truth of what God is.

I consciously recognize health and abundance are always mine. I turn my thoughts to ideas of abundance.

I have so much and I am grateful for God, for Life.

This is True. I am Clear. And so it is. #7

New Business Card

I have my new card - BUT I don't have the phone yet. If you would like to call me, call me at 770-920-0550 for now. My daughter has the phone and has to mail it to me.

Katherine Ari

Chris

Chris

(mascara alert)

by Katherine Ari July 10, 2009

I had this really special lady in my life named Chris. She didn’t confide in me, but I knew something was going on with her breast for some time before she told everyone. She had breast cancer, but she had been trying alternative solutions. I really don’t know what she had been doing or for how long but in May, 2007 she had a diagnosis. The condition was in advanced stages and there was nothing the doctors could do.

People at the spiritual center were in little groups whispering and crying. Another friend of Chris and mine was talking to me. He said he was so upset about Chris. “What’s going on with Chris?” I said.

“She has (such and such number) phase breast cancer. She only has about a month or so to live.” He went on to say that he was really angry because she could have prevented it. He was angry at her and angry he was losing a good friend. She was going to die.

I could tell that the little huddled groups were her close friends and they were crying and talking about her condition too. Chris was going to die. Well, I know how sensitive and intuitive Chris was. Having all those people she was close to thinking and saying, “Chris is going to die” did NOT help her live, help her affirm a healthy life.

In July, we had a big celebration of her life while she was still living. It was wonderful but people still cried. The heaviness was there. As “enlightened” as we pretend to be, our own grief and sadness and projections were weighing us down.

I started going through my own stuff. When I get close to people I feel things. I am somewhat of an empath. I felt very in tuned to Chris. When she would have a bad day or night, I would feel her symptoms and discomfort. There would be heaviness in my chest and it was hard to breathe. When I would see her I would say, “Were you having a bad day on Monday?” She would always say yes.

I wanted to be near her. After all, everyone was talking about how sick she was and time was getting shorter. The more I was around her the more I “soaked” up. I don’t think I was helping her and it was making it hard for me to function. I pulled away. I avoided the groups discussing her. I mentally and physically withdrew from the energy around her.

But I still cared – deeply. I loved her very much. And I wanted to help her. I sent her a story I wrote. It was actually an account of a story journey I had with my spirit guides. The journey was about ascending up to the top of the Tree of Life to the land of Keter. I also was told by one of my spirit grandmothers that she would be with Chris instead of me until she was no longer needed. She did not say until she died – just until she was no longer needed.

I saw Chris one Wednesday night before I sent her the copy of the story. I told her about my grandmother guide being with her until, I paused, “you know, when it is time.” Chris was okay with what I said and how I said it, but a woman standing near-by had this horrific look on her face as if what I said was terrible.

I did a painting of T-cells lined up like soldiers going after the diseased cancer cells. My inner guides told me to leave it up on a table easel until they told me to take it down. “You will know when it is time to take it down,” they whispered to me. I would look at it especially when I felt her symptoms. It’s like I felt when she was weakest I needed to do the imaging for her. I would look at the painting and see T-cell soldiers fighting the battle. And her energy would come back up.

One day, I was feeling angry at my own body issues. I was fuming and feeling sorry for myself. I got really worked up. I suddenly realized that was what Chris was feeling. She was angry her body had not been able to be healthy, stay healthy, and get healthy. She felt it betrayed her. She had done everything she could do but she was losing the battle. We were both screaming, “It isn’t fair!”

I took out my watercolors and paper. I painted the angry sick body I – we – were angry at. It was a mess and the anger and disgust showed. I put it on the canvas and then sat a while. Anger is a normal feeling but it is important to not hold on to it, to move through it. The first painting dried enough that I could remove it from the block to do another.

I began a painting of a woman’s body surrounded with healing purple fires. I wanted to use the image of the purple flame to make our bodies whole and well. There are many healers who talk about the purple flame and call it to a situation to heal what needs healing. It’s no coincidence T-cells are mostly purple. Violet fire is a healing energy!

I had released the feelings when I painted them. I then painted a third. It was art therapy. I was going through a transition in my thinking and using art as a way to process it. The third painting I call the Goddess of Health. After the healing process, I saw the woman – me – as a mature healthy woman. (See Painting.)

I took pictures of the raw paintings and exported them to jpegs. I emailed them to Chris with a brief explanation because she didn’t always understand my abstracts. She said she got it, felt that way, and she thanked me.

In December her family moved her into hospice. I could not go see her. I wanted to. One time I went into my meditation state in my bed at home and took her hand to go up to the place of my meditation story. My spirit grandmother and other faint spirits appeared as I imagined the ascension. Yes, Chris could go to that “place” but I was not supposed to be there. I started choking and abruptly was no longer in the meditative state. She went up and was there a while, but she didn’t stay – not that time.

Around Christmas I got a simple command. “It’s time to take the T-cell painting down now.” Nothing else was said but I knew the battle was mostly over. I lay in bed close to midnight on January 1, almost January 2. I hadn’t talked to anyone for a few days about her. They said she was very weak and the morphine had been increased. As I lay in bed, I felt a heaviness and difficulty breathing. I had experienced that same feeling when my mother made her transition. She was in a small town hospital in Oklahoma. I was in a hotel in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Mother passed. I felt no breath, no movement. “Goodbye Mother,” I whispered and wept myself to sleep.

I started the walk up the spiritual path, the magical place with Chris. Halfway up you stop to receive a bundle that becomes your robe and then a white dress. I stopped there and Chris took the bundle. She continued alone though I could see my grandmother Oma and images of others with her. “Goodbye Chris. I love you and will miss you.” A couple of days later I learned Chris made her transition just after midnight on January 2, 2008.

Mini-Spiritual Mind Treatment - #6

New subject today, July 8, 2009 by Katherine Ari

ABUNDANCE p. 25(Science of Mind by Ernest H0lmes)

Everything in the Universe started with Infinite Intelligence we call God.

God is in all of us. Therefore abundance is part of us too.

It is all One Power and abundance is ours if we have the consciousness to claim it. We do this through our God self.

If I find myself weak and poor and afraid, I have lost sight of God’s Power of abundance.

I focus on God. I know there is abundance for everyone.

I thank God for my richness.

I feel it. I see it. I live it. And so it is. #6

Thought on Michael Jackson

I watched the memorial to Michael Jackson yesterday and was reminded of the humanness of the famous star. I have thought about his unexpected death a lot and wanted to share my final feelings about him.

Thoughts on Michael Jackson
by Katherine Ari July 8, 2009

I have spent many hours thinking about the unexpected and untimely death of pop star Michael Jackson since June 25. It was sudden and unexpected but yet not surprising that he died young. But I am saddened by it.

I personally really liked his music and his performances – though I never saw him in person. He was extremely talented, energetic, and entertaining. I saw his videos and his performances on TV. I watched some of the interviews over the years. I saw the pictures in the tabloids. And I looked in his eyes as he talked. I saw a loving and kind child – no, not a man. The rest of what was said about him including the accusations and trial was all influenced by the observer or writers. I do NOT know the truth because I never met him nor talked to him. I had my own interpretations of what I saw but they are colored by my own beliefs systems and experiences. I unknowingly talked to a couple of pedophiles over a period of a few weeks. There were similarities between them. I didn’t see that in Michael’s eyes.

There used to be this woman living in my neighborhood that was a gossip and busy body. Behind her house was a rental house. A lady was living there for a while and she had frequent late night visitors. The gossip lady decided she was dealing drugs and called the police on her. My interpretation was that the woman may have been doing something illegal but it wasn’t drugs. She moved away.

The next renters were a family with children. The children acted strange and out of control. Their mother never came out of the house. She stayed hidden. The gossip didn’t understand why she was so reclusive and so she decided to call the police again and told them she was dealing drugs. If she didn’t understand the behavior, they were dealing drugs. I had another interpretation myself. The mother was mentally ill but not in treatment. I had worked with children of mentally ill parents before and they acted the same. My point is that when the gossip woman didn’t understand something she judged it based on her own fears and judgments – not on facts. And that is what the media did about Michael Jackson. They, like the busy body, form opinions based on limited knowledge and then put it in print. No one could ever understand what being as famous as he was from a young age was like. There have been several people who did know Michael Jackson personally. But when they talk to the reporters, they have different stories too. The fans, and I was a fan, will never know and it is a loss to the world of entertainment. The jury did not completely believe that he was guilty.

I know something else. I am married to an extremely gifted artist. He is different. If I had met him sooner when he was a child and if we had known then what we know now about believing in ourselves, my husband could have become a famous artist. But if he had become known the world over and famous, I doubt if we would still be together. He couldn’t have handled attention from fans and the media. He is probably not famous because he really doesn’t want to be. I refuse to project my beliefs on what Michael was or wasn’t, but I know because I live with a highly sensitive and creative person that he couldn’t have handled fame with that kind of recognition nor could he have handled hundreds of millions of dollars. If he had created at the level that Michael Jackson created with his talent, he also would have died young or ended up in a mental hospital.

Edgar Allan Poe died young. Elvis died young. Mozart died young and he was probably considered the greatest musician and performer of his time.
As Elton John sings, “their candle burned out long before their legend ever did.” There is a writer, Linda Schierse Leonard, Ph.D., who has written several books in including The Call to Create and another Witness to the Fire. In the latter book, she has researched several famous creative people. Some of them met their inner demons, overcame drug and alcohol addictions and became better at their art or talent. And some of her subjects did not overcome them and died young.

We can get an idea of how hard it was to be Elvis or Michael Jackson but we can never understand just how extremely hard it was. Having what society and psychology books say are normal lives did not exist for them. And there was no one that could help without their own belief systems and projections and they weren’t famous. We think that kind of fame and fortune might be exciting but we really have no idea the things they had to sacrifice that we take for granted. They had to be that famous. It was what they were here for.

I admire what Michael Jackson accomplished and that he lived to the age of 50. He had a very difficult journey and he was good at his job. Whatever mistakes or errors in judgment he made are none of my business. I wasn’t there and I could not walk a mile in his moccasins. I am sad for the three children and his family. I honor his talent. There was nothing like it.

Grandma Eva - memories

Grandma Eva's birthday was July 3, 1903. She made her transitions in 2003, five months before her 100th birthday. She is on my mind this week and I included some little fond memories today.

Grandma Eva – memories of a special little German Irish lady
by Katherine Ari July 8, 2009


Grandma Eva was at her tallest 5’ tall. When she was 88, she had a heart attack. She lived with Grandpa Roy who was 90 in their home in Vermillion, Kansas, a town of 120 as posted on the road sign. Only about 50 of those actually lived in the town. So a medical helicopter airlifted her to the nearest hospital in Onega, KS. When she was put on the chopper, she had some new Nike’s with her. They transported her on to the hospital where they did quadruple bypass surgery on her heart. None of us had high expectations for the prognosis. She was after all 88 years old and had a gray color to her skin for many years because of the heart problems.

Grandma Eva made it through the surgery with flying colors. Her skin lost the gray color and she was out walking three miles a day after she returned home. But evidently someone in the helicopter also didn’t expect an 88-year-old woman to make it, because when she woke up, she didn’t have her new Nike’s. They weren’t with her personal things. The medic service was called and no one would own up to taking the shoes. Every time she had to return to the hospital, the doctor would ask her “Did you ever find your shoes, Eva?” “No,” she would answer. “I’m still looking for them.”

- Eva loved to garden and she loved to cook. Even when she was 92 or 93, she would insist that we come over to her house for dinner. We always tried to dissuade her by taking her out to eat, but we had to let her “feed” us at least once. The meal was always friend chicken, German scalloped potatoes or mashed potatoes, cold slaw, and a mid-west standard in Kansas as well as Oklahoma, some sort of Jell-O salad.

My mother was a great Fried Chicken maker, but though I am a pretty good cook, it isn’t one of my strong points. So Doug volunteered to help her in the kitchen. He got to the stove and started working with the chicken in the skillet. “Oh no, you don’t have the chicken fork. You can’t fry chicken without the right fork,” she quickly corrected him. She pulled out this very sharp table fork and handed it to Doug. The fork had been her Great-Grandmother’s fork and everyone had used it for frying chicken. Chicken just wouldn’t be right if you didn’t fry it with that 200 yr. old fork.

- Eva had known we were coming. Our children were her only great-grand children. On a good day, she had baked cookies – 2 different flavors and put them up in the freezer. She had oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip with black walnuts and pecans. She didn’t give them to us until we were leaving heading back home to Georgia. She said they were for the trip home. Well, let me tell you that they didn’t make it very far. She put so much love into everything she cooked. I don’t know what else she did, but those chocolate chip cookies were the best tasting chocolate chip cookies we ever tasted. They tasted like a Snicker’s bar but they were homemade cookies. It would have been nice to get the recipe, but there was something more in her batter that couldn’t be put on a card. It was a little thing. I don’t think there were more than two or three cookies for each of us, but what a dear memory – so special.

- In Kansas, the farmers are so spread out that the towns are all very small and far apart. They have a good home health care organization for elderly people to travel to the towns. The nurses and helpers take them home meals, provide nursing care, take them to the beauty shop, and take them to doctors and to the dentist. There are sometimes 3 or 4 different caretakers that come by daily. Her main caregiver was a woman about the same age as Doug and I. She told us about some of the things Eva would pull on her. One of the caregivers had come all the way out to Vermillion for an appointment for Eva. Eva left a note on the door that she had gone to the dentist. She was home. She just didn’t want to be bothered. And she pulled that on another one a day or so later. Our friend found out about it and had to get on her about it. “If you pull that stuff again, I’ll put you back in the nursing home in Centralia. Don’t you be putting notes on the door that you have gone to an appointment when you are home!”

But when Eva did have to move to the nursing home, she did the same kinds of things. “Grandma Eva, why don’t you go out in the sitting room and watch TV or visit with the other people?”
“I don’t like to be around those OLD people,” she would answer. She was 98.
“Grandma, the nurses told us you are supposed to go see the doctor today.”
“I’ve been trying to get away from him all day.” She would say as she dodged his office.

- In Kansas around that area, there are white people of German and Swedish decent. There weren’t any other nationalities around when Doug was growing up so he never heard anyone making derogatory comments. When Eva was in the nursing home, she got to watching TV soaps. Doug was quite surprised when she would start complaining about African-Americans and White mixing on the shows. She was always such a loving and sweet person; he just didn’t know she was so “opinionated” about the races mixing.

He gave me a look and then said, “You know Grandma, Kathy has Choctaw and Cherokee blood in her.”
She got this sweet little look on her face and said, “Oh, that’s nice.” And she didn’t say anything else about the races she didn’t like on TV. It was just her generation and the society she lived in.

- As I said, Grandma Eva loved to garden. She always had flowers and fruits and vegetables in her yard. They also had black walnuts trees. Grandpa Roy would sit out in the backyard picking them out for hours. He was a tall man and had a pretty hard time getting around in his 90’s. One day he had been out there shelling walnuts while sitting on a bucket. When he decided he had shelled them as long as he wanted, he tried to get up. He couldn’t get up. He called Eva to come help, but as I said earlier, Eva was a small woman. She couldn’t get him up either.

She went to the basement and got a rope and tied it around his waist and the other end to the car. She was going to pull him up by driving the car with him tied to it. Luckily, a neighbor saw what they were doing before she took off. After that Doug’s dad took the car keys and car away from both of them. – and not too soon after that, put a padlock on the door to the basement.

- Roy died when he was 96. He was in a special section of the nursing home and she was in another area. They had several times over the years gone to the home on their own, stayed a while until they felt stronger, and then checked themselves out again to return to their own home. So when Roy died, she went back home again. We were there visiting and at that time my father-in-law was living with his girlfriend in another town called Olmsberg, Kansas. It was about a 40-minute drive away.

We were there for our usual family visit and we had been invited to Dale and Betty’s house for the day. We picked Eva up and drove over. While we were there, it started raining really hard and rained that way for about 5 hours.

It is very flat in Kansas and when it rains that hard for that long, the creeks and rivers quickly overflow. Then the roads are flooded and you have to take alternate routes to get around in the spread out farm country. When it was time to go home, we couldn’t go back the way we had come that was on a small two-lane county road.

We had to go further north and take US Highway 36 from the Marysville turn back toward Seneca and then angle around to Vermillion. There is a road that they call the Axel Road that goes straight off US Hwy 36 to County Hwy 88 to Vermillion, but with the rising rivers and flooded other roads, Doug felt that the Axel road would also be flooded out. We were driving back on US Hwy 36. We would drive a little ways and Eva would say, “Now when you get to the Axel road, that is where you turn.”
Doug would answer, “I know about the Axel Rd., Grandma, but we are going on around tonight because of the flood. I expect it will be flooded out too.” She would say okay.

Three or five minutes later, she would say, “Now when you get to the Axel Road, you turn there.” Patiently Doug would answer the same way. Five minutes later, she would say it again. Doug kept his cool and patiently kept answering her the same way. She must have said it 12 times. I was in the back with the kids and we just looked at each other, rolled our eyes, and smiled. Doug just kept answering her the same way. It wasn’t an argument. She just kept saying the same thing like a broken record. He just thought it was because she was old and being forgetful or something related to her 95 years of age.

Then we got almost to the Axel road. Again she said, “The Axel Road is where you turn. They fixed the bridge a few years ago. It is high enough now that the water won’t be over the bridge.” Doug was thinking, “Yes, I know the bridge is higher but if the water is out of the banks, it may still be over the road before or after the bridge.”

But then he thought, “She just keeps insisting. Maybe she knows something I don’t know. If we go down the road and it is under water, we can just turn around. Then maybe she will listen to me.” So he said, “Okay Grandma, we’ll go on the Axel Road.”

We did. There was no problem. “Could it be that being so old and close to the other side that she had a sixth sense about those things?” We wondered. She wouldn’t stop saying it and she was right.

- Grandma was in Onega again in the hospital when she was around 98. We would drive over there every day to be with her. The drive on the country roads was 30 or 40 minutes. Grandma Eva had adult onset diabetes. Doug’s dad has diabetes. My mother and grandmother had diabetes. Doug and I woke up that morning and both of us were thinking about diabetes. We were talking about it while we were in Vermillion. When we arrived at the hospital 45 minutes later, Eva was napping as usual. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and grabbed Doug’s arm. With intensity she looked at him in the eyes and said, “That diabetes is a horrible, mean disease. You better take care of yourself and your family. You don’t want to have to deal with diabetes!” Then she relaxed and went back to sleep. “Woo – woo!” That is what we call a woo - woo; again she was close to the other side and just had a sixth sense that only a 98 year old would have.

- Eva was sweet and generous. She was patient, a good cook, and a good gardener. Every caretaker that she had ever had called her everyday at the nursing home or the hospital. She never said a cross word to anyone even when Roy was being his meanest. Yes, she made her comments about things she saw on TV or about the doctors she wanted to avoid, but at 98, she would get up daily to take care of her roommate who was 101. Doug grew up on Grandma Eva’s fried chicken and homemade pies. We all always felt her love. When she was 99, the family gave her 99 plus one to grow on long stem red roses. “We’ll give you another 100 on your 100th birthday,” a family member said.
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be here for 100,” she said. She was right again.