Family Members' deaths

 Question 6:  Have any of your family members died? If so, what did they die from? What do you remember of their death, and what were the circumstances of their death?

As a child, I loved visiting my great grandma Della Hatton Young Erickson.  She was such an elegant, classy lady.  Her house was beautiful and spotless.  Her yard was perfectly manicured and was so lovely.  She has these ballerina figurines displayed that I absolutely loved.  I remember that we would play in her backyard and she would often offer us ice cream.  She bought ice cream in the rectangular cartons and when she served ice cream, rather than using a scoop, she would take a knife and cut a thin rectangle of ice cream--it seemed so unusual and also such a large amount of ice cream!  She died in 1992, when I was a sophomore in high school.  She was 87, and while I am not certain of the exact cause of death, she had lived a long full life.  

My grandma Faye Morris Neff passed away in 2010.  I was married with children.  My children don't really remember her--Michelle was 7 when she died and Gabby was only 2.  She was in a car accident which caused her to lose her eye and broke bones and bruised her badly.  She survived and after time in the hospital and in rehab, she came back home.  Then she had a fall and broke her hip (I believe) and she didn't recover.  She was nearly 86.

My grandpa Reed Gordon Bills had diabetes for years.  He also had a bad knee; he had been injured while fighting in WWII.  When he was in his early 80's, he had knee surgery and he struggled to recover.  He was put into an assisted living facility with my grandma and we thought he didn't have long to live.  However, the assisted living facility managed his diabetes and his health improved significantly.  He'd received a blessing that he would live to age 90 and he did.  He lived about a month after he turned 90.  I went to visit him (by that point he was in a nursing home in Provo) and he was frail and didn't wake while I was there.  He passed away while I was driving home.  He had dementia along with diabetes.  

My grandma Marjorie Young Bills lived to be 87.  She also suffered from dementia.  One of the last times I visited her, she thought my children were my cousins and that the nurse was her son. She was trapped back in times past, thinking her children were young adults with young children.  

My grandpa Franklin Floyd Neff passed away a year and a half ago.  He was nearly 96.  My grandpa was a very quiet and gentle man, a man of few words.  I know that over the last couple of years of his life, his health was deteriorating.  He had always been thin and he grew even thinner.  He developed allergies to several foods and he didn't have many teeth so eating became difficult.  I think it was probably a relief for him to pass and be reunited with my grandma and with his parents and many of his siblings and so many others he had known.  

I have been immeasurably blessed by each of these grandparents and their influences in my life.