50th Reunion

I attended my BYU folk dancers reunion yesterday in Provo, Utah. Amazing how quickly the time has passed. I got a nice hug from the director of our dancing group Mary Bee-she is now 92 and still very active though retired from teaching. I saw many of my classmates (that's Mary Bee, me and Lorraine Miner in photo). I was surprized to realize I was one of the oldest former dancers there. As I looked at all these gray haired people, I thought do I look that old?

It's interesting when you look back on your life (photo of me and the new Alumni building) and realize what you could have accomplish and compare that with others' accomplishments BUT that kind of thinking really gets you no where. Life is what it is and we do the best we can with what it brings us. I left BYU and my dancing career to follow my husband and raise a family, in the meantime I was able to teach other places, see the world-living in Brazil and ultimately raise 4 sons while trying to develop my talents and live true to my religious faith. Here's some more new photos I copied from the scrapbooks at our reunion of me in some Scottish folk dances we did.

And last of all a photo of our group of folk dancers that went on the first tour of Europe in 1964. That was a great experience. (I'm in the center of the wheel facing left, age 24 at the time.) We toured Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy and Hungary before heading home and dancing at the World's Fair in NYC. Instead of doing international folk dances we had to learn our own American folk dances-square dances, clogging and others forms.

Fighting a Cold

How do you catch a cold you don't want?
It kind of sneaks up on you and invades.
returning from visiting sick grandkids,
I find myself dreading any symptoms

that could say...You have a cold and

are going to be sick, sick, sick.



I don't want a cold, I have other plans
especially for this weekend, tickets bought
arrangements made to travel north again.
It's a 50th reunion for the BYU's Folk Dancers,
I can't believe I was there so long ago dancing

where did the time fly to...fifty years gone.

So, how do you avoid a cold you don't want?
Rest, drink lots of fluids, exercise, eat healthily

but it may still find you, when you feel that

first hot flash or queasy stomach pains signaling

something is wrong. Oh no, I have a cold and

don't want to be sick, sick, sick.

Feeling better but have a lovely cold sore on my face, and I'm off for the weekend...

Article #81 Family Funerals

We need to have practice funerals, times that we get together before a loved one passes away to celebrate their life and interact with them. But that’s not how life happens. My own grandmother’s death came suddenly, unplanned, when she was in the hospital just to be released after a bout with pneumonia. She had just written a letter to one of her daughters saying…Don’t you worry. I’m so much better here. Have the very best of care. Then a blood clot formed and quickly took her life. We were all in shock at grandma’s sudden demise and wished we had visited her more often. I lived about 100 miles away then, and because of college classes hadn’t been able to see her in the hospital.

With my own mother, her death came slowly after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. She declined then fell into a coma and quietly left us. Hospice was a great help with her situation, and family members who lived nearby were able to visit her often. But it wasn’t until Mom’s funeral that the whole family came together for the first time in many years. Unfortunately, she was not alive to enjoy the company of all her grandchildren and extended family.

We need to have more pre-funeral celebrations. Maybe that’s what a family reunion is all about, but today’s families are too busy for gathering. We live too far apart. The tight knit family dwelling in the same community is a thing of the past. We may twitter and email but we’re lacking the physical contacts-the hugs, kisses and face-to-face conversations that we had in earlier times with our extended family.

Next summer I will be celebrating my 70th birthday, which seems impossible because I feel much younger inside! I’m trying to get my whole family together to celebrate, but I doubt it will happen. If it was my funeral, they would make the effort to come, but I would like to have the physical contact and interaction that comes only from being all together as a family now.

How about you? Is there someone you need to visit who might not be there tomorrow? It’s not only age that takes us away from this life, but accidents and illnesses that can come at any age. Isn’t it time we made more time for family and planned more pre-funeral celebrations or practice funerals?