Grandpa Snow

We received some shocking news last week. On Sunday, Jeremy's Grandpa Snow had been having a pain in his neck so they took him into the ER. They couldn't find anything wrong and sent him home. I guess the pain didn't go away so he went back in again. Tuesday we received a call saying that he had an aortic aneurysm. It was in his neck which is a very rare place to have them. He had two options: have very risky surgery with no guarantees for the outcome, or do nothing and die in a day or two. He had just had open heart surgery 6 months before and really struggled recovering from that. In fact, they had just been able to move back home after a long stay in the hospital and in the rehab facility. I guess he decided that he was tired of surgery and so he opted to just let things progress.
The doctors didn't think that he would even make it 24 hours. Jeremy and I had been asked to speak in church on Sunday and I was supposed to teach in Relief Society as well, but with the doctor's predictions we all thought that we would be going down to St. George for a funeral on Tuesday.
Grandpa Snow was stronger than we all thought, doctors included. By Saturday night he was still hanging in there. At that point, they were still planning on a Tuesday funeral and we were a little worried about the driving down to St. George the next morning like we had planned if he hung on longer.
Early Sunday morning, however, he finally passed away. We were planning on driving right down to St. George but then we were told that the funeral was changed to this Friday. So, we will be making a quick trip down to St. George Thursday and then coming back on Friday evening. We wanted to be back for the kids soccer in the morning. If it was just a game, we would have missed it, but they were also taking pictures. Also, Friday is Dalton's birthday and we were planning on having his party on Saturday, so if we are back for soccer, we figured that we would still have the party then.
I feel a little guilty for skipping out on speaking and teaching in church because we ended up being here after all. However, Jeremy would not have been able to handle it. He didn't even want to go to church because he didn't want to have to interact with other people. We ended up taking the kids and going to Temple Square so they could wander around looking at the fountains and flowers while we talked a little.
Jeremy lived with his grandparents while he was going to school down there and this is his first grandparent to pass away. I hope the funeral helps him to deal with the loss. It has been hard for him. I wish there was something more I could do.