Emptying the Glass

My friends,

I have to report honestly, things don't look good from where I sit. I am trying to ride this one out, but the situation is getting worse rapidly.

I am counting on a few years probation on my life, because I seriously believe that the Heavenly Father has some sort of mission left for me to complete. But my probation can be cut short at any moment.

I learned at the University of Utah Medical Center from the cerebral angiogram combined with the MRI that I can and will have more brain stem strokes. Not good news, but now I know for certain where the brain stem strokes are originating. None of the other doctors seemed to care.

Some difference of opinion about what that means exactly leads to a slight difference about just how long I might have to wait until I have another brain stem stroke. I have looked at statistics, and found that the odds are dismal for multiple stroke survivors. They seldom survive more than three or four strokes for more than a five year period. What that means to me is that if I have another stroke, probably within five years, it will likely end my life, and even if it doesn’t, I might wish it had. So, I am working on a mission that prepares me for death within that time.

I have met my sons, something I never thought could happen. I take that as a good sign. not just a good sign, a sign direct from Heaven. My four sons stood united together to give me a Priesthood blessing. Nothing like that could happen-- I thought it was impossible. If you said anything even remotely like that was possible I'd stare at you like you were out of your mind. I don't pretend to know what the sign means, but I pledge to work as hard as I can to help them.

I have had some miracles happen to me, and am trying to write about them all. It isn't easy. I get very tired. Things happen.

Tonight, I swallowed a piece of banana down the wrong pipe, and things got pretty exciting for a while. My swallow doesn't work well, and every food bite is a risk. So I have to be careful.

In the half-full department, I found out that I can no longer directly recall my parents names. I remember my mom and dad. They seem like always mom and dad. But I can't bring up their names when I try directly, and it upsets me.

I can envision a pencil the brothers used to use, it had all their names on it, dad, lewis, dean, bill, dave, leroy, john.

Of course, my dad is Bill. Why didn’t I remember that?

And my parents are Bill and Mary. I know that.

My mom's father is Leo Norris. I own a domain name for his family. How could these things be gone from my brain?

It makes me so sad.

The feeling is as if I had accumulated precious knowledge like grains of sand, laboriously, bit by bit, through my lifetime.

I paid a terrible price, but it was worth every cent.

Now, no matter how tight my grasp, it is slowly slipping away, and soon there will be nothing. I will be left penniless and desolate and not even knowing the glorious things I have lost.

So will end the Snail Hollow Gazette.