Rain memories!

Well today is a rainy, dreary day, but I LOVE RAIN. Spring rain always reminds me of my days in Seattle. In the spring of 1999, my son, Michael and I moved to Seattle to live for a few weeks, maybe a month. He was scheduled to have a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor in the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. This time in my life was pretty messed up. My perfect life as a stay home mom, babysitting a family of 3 beautiful and sweet girls, had all of a sudden been turned upside down. I had to let McKenzie go to another daycare or babysitter, without any warning, she had been such a great part of my life, of Michaels life and all of the family actually. I was worried about her, I missed her and I loved her. That was hard. Then Dr. Emma said we had to move to either Seattle or Salt Lake. Well you know me, Seattle is where we are going. We have family and lots of friends there. So on January 24, 1999, I left my girls at Jack and Sharlene Duerksens home, they were taking my girls to live with them until we all came back. Dennis drove us to Seattle and left a few days later to come back to Idaho. Now my life in Seattle was not what most people would call good, BUT I was there to help save my son from the dreadful cancer desease that was taking over his body. First we moved into a little 1 bedroom apartment on the 2nd floor of 1st Hills 410 10th Ave. No Seattle at night is a new experience to this country girl. I loved visiting Seattle, there are lots of cool things to see, but the night time is scarey. We lived in our apartment for about a week before they admitted us to 10th floor of the Swedish Medical Center on Broadway. The first few days were okay, we were learning the ropes of the life in 10SW. Eventually since we were going to be there awhile, they moved us down the hall to a bigger room where we lived for months. One night while we were still in our small room, we had a nice blonde haired nurse that was such a sweetie, she was so gentle and helpful to Michael and to me. Dennis had left that day and we were feeling pretty alone and abandoned in this whole new scarey world. Michael was asleep and I was watching of all things ER, it was the episode where George Clooney had a wreck and they left you hanging until the next season. Well I was sitting up, anxious to see what was going to happen and Nurse Heidi came in and watched, soon there were about 4 other nurses all staring at the TV wondering what was going to happen and when George wrecked, they all said loudly "NO". Then they realized they were all not doing their jobs and hurried out, Heidi sat down on the bed to check on Michaels vitals and we were visiting. I noticed a beauiful silver ring on her ring finger and asked her if she was married and she said No, and then we got to talking about where she lived, etc. She then informed me she was struggling with her job, thinking she wanted to leave and go somewhere else as a traveling nurse and that she had prayed about it and I got all kinds of talkative and asked if she was a Christian and she told me the ring was her purity ring and that she was called the mission work, but felt for some reason God wanted her at Swedish, she lived up in northern Washington. That night, as she got ready to leave her shift, she came in and prayed over Michael and I and she prayed about things I had never talked to her about, the lonely feeling, the abandonment, the unknown, etc. As she got ready to walk out, she gave me a hug and told me "I know why I am here". Heidi is still dear to us. She was there with me through all 3 transplants, she came to our apartment and helped us get ready to leave, we went to church with her when we could, she came down to visit us and Michael ended up in the hospital and she stayed with the girls while we were at the hospital in Boise. When Michael passed away, Heidi was out on the Mercy Ship serving Christ to all the little kids in Africa (I think).

Anyway, that is really not my intentional blog, but oh well, now that I have my tears out of the way . . . . Rainy Seattle. Michael and I saw all kinds of seasons from the 10th floor of the hospital, often it would be snowing and then on the lower floors they would see rain, that was interesting. When we finally got to go live at the apartment, the girls were in shock of the people mowing their lawns in the rain. In Idaho, that is a great excuse not to mow the lawn, but not in Seattle. That year, I guess was a record year for rain, or so they said. It seems like every time we are there it rains and everyone says things like "It hasn't rained in days". I think they just get so use to it, they don't notice it or something.
To this day, I enjoy rain, it brings bitter sweet memories to mind, makes me all emotional, but I enjoy it. Not sure if that makes sense to many people, but it does to me.