August 27,2026- My granddaughter has started joking around, in her way, telling me a fair amount of babbling, then giggling. I then get a hug around the neck. She will also shout :”Hey”, from the playpen, to see who answers. She has been sleeping more soundly at night, though she gets up at 5 a.m., probably a bit too soon for her parents. Sometimes, Hana will see that they are sleeping, and lie back down, herself.

Hana is also getting more confident in her standing. She is listening better to her parents and making an effort to not try to stand up, when in the dining high chair. That was starting to make us more than a little nervous. She loves our early morning walks in the stroller, occasionally singing little tunes, as we go along.

HANA’S NOTE- Is something happening in the sky? It seems like some people are acting strange. I’m glad my grownups are not.

YEAR IN REMEMBRANCE-2010 Penny began sleeping more, in February. I kept watch on her, but when she was awake, she seemed lucid. I taught a class at the same Community College where Penny had studied in 2000. It went so/so. My teaching was not altogether focused and a rather pedantic delivery, much of the time, didn’t help. I substituted in the two districts, on days when I wasn’t in class. My son and a couple of young people who were living with us helped tend to Penny, while I was putting food on the table and keeping the utilities on.

Our finances had collapsed, though, and we faced foreclosure. An arrangement was worked out, where we were able to short sell the home, and the investor who bought it let us live there, for as long as Penny was able to stay with us. I did what I could to renovate: Painting the exterior, replacing the carpet and painting the major rooms.

By June, Penny needed surgery on her back and was officially diagnosed with Polyglucosan Body Disease. Following the fairly successful surgery, though, she needed to be in rehabilitation, in a specialty hospital. She was treated fairly well there, and had the serendipity of her breathing therapist being a young lady who we knew as a baby in Tuba City, nearly twenty five years earlier. The girl only made the connection when she told her mother, also a nurse, about her work with Penny, and her mother remembered us.

We continued with my working, Penny remaining in the specialty hospital and Aram going through his semester at a community college, until November, when the insurance ran out. Penny was then deemed ready for hybrid hospice care, Some alternatives were presented, which both Penny and I considered unseemly. We arranged for her to be treated by a visiting hospice doctor and nurse.

I was about to turn 60, a milestone that was important to my siblings, as our dad had not made it that far. Aram and I celebrated on my actual birthday, 11/28, with three of the boarders, enjoying pizza. My two brothers and a sister-in-law came to Phoenix in early December, and joined the three of us at Durant’s Restaurant, a top Phoenix steakhouse. It would be Penny’s last restaurant meal. We also took in the APS Parade of Lights, a nice touch that was one of my wife’s last enjoyable outings. I took her to the Grand Canyon Baha’i Conference, for a couple of days, as well.

When we “rang in the New”, ten of us saw 2011 arrive. My beloved wife slept through it, and we would have only two more months together.