My friend Glenn died this morning :'(

My friend Glenn died this morning. He says we met in college, about 1969, but I don't remember him being there. It's embarrassing to have been that self-absorbed. Then when I hired on at Commerce Bank, there he was. He was a difficult person. A grumbler. Never satisfied. Critical. After getting a few promotions, being responsible for him as my employee, I found him to be a pot-stirrer, a gossip. The work relationship was difficult. After about 25 years, Glenn left the bank, and I left in 1996. Then a few years ago, I get an email from him asking if I was the Deb who used to work at Commerce Bank. And it was as if we had never had a cross word. I apologized for some of the hard times I had put him thru at the bank and he quickly brushed it aside as nothing. While he never apologized for how he acted back then, it was clear that he had changed, and it seemed it was important for me to know it. I think it was his way of saying he was sorry.

We have emailed literally every day since he found me. Sometimes just silly jokes, weather gab, encouragement for me to start walking. But usually we revealed little bits and pieces of our lives since we lost touch, and about our current adventures. He was never anything but positive, compassionate, and pleasant.

Not too long after we started emailing, I asked Glenn about God, his feelings about and relationship with Jesus. He wasn't too sure. Had a Pastor friend who had been talking to him quite a bit about the Lord. But he really didn't think he believed all that stuff. I started working God into a lot of my emails, testimonies about what the Lord had done in me, for me, and thru me. Glenn listened. Our mutual friend Jean also bent Glenn's ear about her Lord & Savior. Glenn's emails gradually became more and more pro-Christ. All of his emails for the past few months have included blessings and praises and gratitude to God. He had become a man of prayer, praise God. I never asked Glenn to pray the the sinner's prayer, but I saw real evidence of a conversion.

On 10/14, after a few days of not hearing from Glenn, I got this email "sorry i havent written i guess iam sick cancer am in hospital will write more later please pray for me i am a fighter glenn"
30 days ago, he was out washing his van. Today he is dead.

How long has Glenn known he had cancer? I suspect he knew 3 years ago, when he started fervently seeking out long-lost acquaintances. He found people from his old childhood neighborhood. He found his best friend from high school. He found dozens of coworkers from the 70's and 80's. He found me. And I am so thankful he did.

I am awed that in 3 short years, this man was able to totally undo all the negative impressions from the past, completely rehabilitate his image, rewrite his legacy, and most importantly, get right with God.

Long overdue

The 3 most important things I have acquired during my genealogical research are stories documented by my ancestors.

My great-grandmother Ada Belle Crawford kept a diary of the first few years of my grandfather's life. Handwritten on precious hard-to-come-by pieces of notepaper pinned together at the top, and a lock of grandpa's bright red hair (from his first haircut in about 1904) sewn to the paper, along with a scrap of the fabric from his first "dress". What a treasure!

Another cherished find was a story documented by great-grandmother Minnie Myrtle Harmon Fox about relocating her family to rural Nebraska during a blizzard, in which she and 3 children became lost, one my grandfather Harold. After being found and rescued in the nick of time, she and the children all suffered for days, the two youngest near death from hypothermia. They survived but lost all their fingers.

The 3rd treasure comes from Herm's grandmother, documenting their 1896 travel by conestoga across NE back into Iowa, where the family settled for good. Details about things like digging a hole in which to cook biscuits glitter on every page.

So, why have I not yet started documenting important stories to pass on to my descendents? Time, as always, is my best and worst excuse. Dread, of starting and not finishing. Awe, of how significant the above 3 stories are to me, yet none exceeds 10 pages. Fear, of filling volumes of cyberspace pages with details that won't mean anything to anyone but me, of appearing silly and insignificant to future generations. Concern, that I will invest time in this endeavor that perhaps nobody will ever see, when I have so many other things I should be working on.

But here we are, we have started. Who is this we? We are the Christian woman; the Mom of Travis & Trent; the wife of Herm; the sister of Ken, Ben* and Steph; daughter of Kenneth* and Jo Ann Crawford* Fox; friend to many (hopefully they all know about this LOL), T-shirt and sign business person, the community volunteer, the cattle farmer, the prairie enthusiast; owner of Little Annie (great pyrenees), Blue (blue heeler) and Red (red heeler); the genealogist, the cemetery documenter (aka Graver), the wannabe quilter and wannabe painter and wannabe grandma. I reserve the right to jump at will from one topic to another, without warning. So if you attempt to read this blog (aka diary), I guess you'll have to wear your neck brace and guess which person is talking!

So, welcome to my long-overdue blog. It will bore most of you to tears. But hopefully, something here will survive me, into the future, into the hearts of my descendents, or others who might shares some of my interests and experiences.

Praying God's richest blessings to all,
Deb
PS: * denotes deceased loved ones