Liz called the other night and said that she had taken the boys to see Eleanor, and get some ice cream cones at Heartland. While she was there, Eleanor was pulling old cards from her scrap book of the World War II years. She has kept that book for over 60 years, and suddenly she decided to "recycle" the cards, by tearing them out of the book and giving them to the ladies at Heartland to make new cards. Joanne, Mark, and I took Eleanor to lunch at the Country Club today, and she had baked salmon with green beans. She really enjoyed missing dinner at Heartland.
When we returned to the apartment, Joanne rescued the remains of the scrap book and brought it to our house "for the boys to look at". There were lots of news articles from the Goodhue and Red Wing papers as well as cartoons, church bulletins, and magazine articles. I wish she hadn't decided to recycle, as I feel we have lost a link to her life. Something that one could go to and get a sense of who their mother, grand mother, or great grandmother was.
Last week was a difficult one for Eleanor, she was depressed as she went through a period of remembering Fred's birthday, death, their anniversary, and Evelyn's broken hip. She seems to be doing much better now; she had several days of visits from Mark, and Liz and the boys, a family cookout with Mark, Dan and Jill, Liz, Sam, Maggie, Austin, Shelby, and Natalie in attendance.
It's important to get out and see the world instead of sitting in Heartland. It's a nice place to live, but probably gets "old" being there day after day. Her back pain seems much improved, so maybe some short outings may be just what the doctor might ordered.
