Week#27 the great plan of happiness

My father died on Monday night. His heath had been declining over the past couple of years. I am grateful that my Alberta-based siblings were able to be with him during this last few days. I visted with him on Sunday afternoon by video conference. Unlike when we farmed together, this time I did most of the talking. He was able to open one eye, speak a few soft words and lift one of his arms to acknowledge me. Like many people his age, somehow he knew that he did not have long to live. He would have celebrated his 90th birthday in May.

With my emotions now unleashed from "the box" I used to keep them carefully locked up in, for the first time in my life, I find myself grieving. I realize now that I didn't grieve when my mother died in 2005 because I was incapable. When she died I was also in Mexico City and here I am again. Grieving seems to entail a mixture of emotions, something I really didn't expect. Unlike in 2005, with considerable help from my psychologist friends and EFTT, I am allowing myself to feel my emotions and to learn from them. I am discovering wonderful pieces of me that I didn't know existed.    

I respected and knew my father very well, having farmed with him for 12 years after high school and college. When we were newly married, Sister Schlachter observed that my father and I didn't actually speak to each other when we worked together. We didn't need to, in hindsight, I would describe myself as a pair of gloves fitting over his hands, not needing verbal direction. I wonder if this resembled his experience with his own father who was deaf and mute - the cues were mostly visual, a look, a nod or other gesture.  Will I miss him, yes, he taught me a lot and I feel I have become like him in many ways - I am honest, I keep my word, I have a great amount of empathy and love for the elderly, I too can strike up a conversation with a rock and I am a risk taker.  And I too have struggled to accept and express emotions of any kind.  Like me, this past year was the first time I saw my father get "emotional".  

My comfort is in the Great Plan of Happiness, knowing that each of our lives continue after death and that by obedience to sacred ordinances and the redeeming and enabling power of Jesus Christ, we can live together together again as families - free of the challenges of strife, trauma and drama we face in our journey to become more like our Saviour. One of my dad's sayings was that if you get kicked around enough, you get "schmart" - I have had my share of blows but don't know that I have attained "schmart" status yet. Another one of his dad sayings was, "it's a bugger to get old". Over the past few months he was quick to point out that none of his children knew much about getting old yet. 

This past week we were in Oaxaca for two events, one a rain capture project and the other a donation of 350 wheelchairs. Both were remarkable in different ways.  The first was with a "comunidad", a social organization of people that predates the creation of state-organized social organizations called ejidos that were a response to political demands by peasants for plots of land - the land they usually received was of little productive value but you could stand on it even it was a mountain side.  A fellow I spoke to who is a member of this comunidad explained one of the difference between the two structures as being that the comunidades have a culture of cooperation whereas the ejidos generally do not. The project we are co-funding is to rebuild a water shed which requires a lot of volunteer labour.  I had asked him how difficult it would be to get volunteers to do the work over the five plus years of the project - he said it wasn't a problem.  The major problem was keeping the city folks out to minimize the risk of forest fires, and volunteers having to extinguish them with the shovels and picks that we donated as part of the project.  They are planting trees and building water diversion structures. They had tried to partner with city officials but all they could think of was digging deeper wells instead of capturing more water in the watershed. 

The wheelchair project was very life changing for the individuals involved.  The first three days involved training people in the recipient organization how to properly determine if someone would benefit from having a wheelchair, choosing the right type of wheelchair for them, fitting the chair to their body and then showing them how to manoeuvre in the chair.  The main focus of the event was to train the trainers and on the last day people requesting wheelchairs were brought in for the "students" to practice what they learned under the watchful eye of the trainers. 

A lady that received a new wheel chair caught my attention.  She had no legs and like almost all of recipients that day, she appeared to have been broken by the situation she found herself in.  Her gaze remained on the floor but she lifted her face to respond to my efforts to speak with her with a smile. It was wonderful to see her smile when she took a spin in her new wheelchair. The one she came in was so big that she couldn't reach over the arm rests to grab the wheels with her arms to propel herself. She previously depended upon her daughters and son-in-law to move her from place to place. 

 This morning on my way to the Palmas office after a meeting in the main office across from Teca Once where we live, I came across a fellow walking a whole herd of dogs.  Again, we live in a very affluent neighbourhood and often come across domestic servants walking dogs. I passed this same guy earlier in the morning walking a smaller group of the same bunch of dogs.  

When I stopped him on sighting number two and asked him if I could take a picture of his gang, he readily agreed and then went about trying to get all of his friends to sit and pose. However, the moment he turned his back on any of them, they inevitably stood up again. Dog doo doo is a common sight even in our neighbourhood, described by our manager this morning as "civilized" compared to other areas of the city and its greater area.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the real-time recycling program where the guys on the garbage truck go through every bag of garbage and pick out anything of value; bottles, cardboard, glass, metals etc. This morning while the guys in the back were on task, one of them was standing on top of the load indiscriminately cutting internet cables out of the way to allow the truck to pass. 

Our internet in the Palmas office quit working last Friday, thankfully I was able to tag my phone and use its data. Service was restored this afternoon only after we made quite a fuss. When I asked the maintenance guy what happened he said our supply cable had been cut. It took Telmex quite a bit of time to install a new one. Surprisingly, everything is above the ground here - from what I saw this morning, the garbage crew may have been the cause.  

Lastly, the jacaranda (hack-a -randa) trees are starting to bloom, leaving a carpet of purple flowers underneath them.  The sight fills my heart with joy for some reason.  

We have a very busy week ahead of us. We are sharing a meal tomorrow with the young Elders that work in the mission office, Saturday I am teaching my first English Connect class (free English language classes to help participants improve their employment opportunities - this one will be on-line). Sunday I am teaching the priesthood class in the Spanish Ward (the focus is Elder Gong's conference talk, "Love is Spoken Here", Monday we fly home, my father's funeral is on Wednesday in Bow Island. I will be sharing his life history during the luncheon that follows the service in St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church. We return to Mexico on Thursday to pick up where we left off.  We have been given an additional assignment in the Education Department. Life can be great!