Weekend with Grandpa

Brett's grandpa has become very sick the last year or so. He is struggling with infections and dementia. He moved out to California to live with Brett's aunt & uncle last summer and we got an email saying that he wasn't doing too well. Brett felt that he should fly down to see him. At the last minute he told me that he had bought me a ticket also and got my mom to watch the girls so Brett, Judson and I all flew down to Orange County to see Grandpa Smith for a weekend. Judson slept on the plane the whole time. I was a bi worried that he would be a nightmare. But he was an angel.

It was such a great visit. As expected, grandpa had trouble remembering us and other things but recruited me (the lady with the baby as he called me) to help him with some online group to help people to help people. ??? :) I never quite got what exactly he wanted to do, but he wanted to talk to me about it often and try to make sure I understood and I was going to do something about it. I listened and tried to understand the best I could while asking questions just so I could talk to him longer. He is such a wonderful man. An incredible man. I am so so glad that Brett took me along to make some memories with Grandpa while I still can.

We took grandpa to the beach. He wanted us to wheel his wheelchair out in the sand but of course we couldn't cause it would just sink. He was getting frustrated with us thinking that we couldn't figure out how to turn his chair to get onto the sand. We found a place where we parked his chair on the sidewalk and he was able to put his feet on the sand. That seemed to be good enough for him. Brett sat with him while they looked at the ocean. It was a good moment. Grandpa had a bag of chips and started feeding the birds. Apparently the birds were starving and started fighting each other and pretty much standing on grandpas feet trying to get his chips. Grandpa was having such a good time and he thought the whole thing was so funny.

Later that day we went back to the beach with Judson and got some pictures of his first time seeing the ocean.

I am so glad that we got to go out there for the weekend. It was such a good trip fun of great memories.

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