Grandma Henke

Aunt Faye was my “little” aunt.   I don’t know how tall she actually was but it couldn’t have been five feet.  My guess would be more like 4 feet 10 inches maybe?     She was so short that the fact that she was also overweight made her appear to me to be … round.   Aunt Faye was round, and I thought she was beautiful.

Aunt Faye was on the Allsop side of the family …Dad’s side.   Her daughter, Carol, was my age.   We were actually one month apart to the day, with me being the oldest, which, for some reason made me feel important like maybe I was 30 days smarter or something.   Carol and I were close cousins and we spent a lot of time at each other’s houses, sleeping over whenever our parents agreed, so I pretty much knew and loved her mother, who loved to laugh and make life fun for her family.

When I was in my late teens Aunt Faye started to have some serious health problems.    Her diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s came some time later.   By the time her symptoms had a name she was pretty much confined to a wheel chair and her arms didn’t have enough strength in them to brush her hair or lift a spoon full of food to her mouth.     Eventually, she couldn’t make the muscles in her throat work well enough to speak clearly.   Even worse than that she got so she couldn’t swallow her food.   And finally, she couldn’t breathe.

Mother used to go from Draper to Salt Lake to help her on Saturday, which was her day off work.    I remember one weekend when I was about twenty-two when Uncle Bob brought her out to my parents home and Dad, as usual, called everyone to the living room and had them sit and listen to me play the piano.  Aunt Faye was wheeled in and given a front row seat in her wheel chair.  I could play the piano fairly well but I was never really sure if people really would have chosen to hear me if they’d had the freedom to choose.

I’d pretty much played all of Dad’s favorites, Bumble Boogie, Malaguena, Debussy’s Claire de Lune, … can’t remember the others … and everybody sort of started to drift out of the room.    Dad asked me to play some of the hymns he and Aunt Faye … so I started going through the hymnal and picking out the ones I thought she would like to hear.   After a few hymns I turned around and it was just me and Aunt Faye.   She tried so hard to tell me something, and I think she was telling me she had enjoyed my piano playing.     I said, “Aunt Faye, you don’t have to say that.    Everyone who could walk out is already gone.”    And she laughed and laughed.    It was our moment.     I held her hand and was able to tell her what she meant to me … and she tried to tell me, too.  I couldn’t understand the words she was trying to say but I understood the tear that fell down her cheek and the look in her big, beautiful brown eyes.

It broke my heart to see what Aunt Faye went through at the hands of that insidious disease.    It took everything from her little by little … her legs, her arms, the strength in her neck, her voice … her privacy.    In the end she had to have total care.    It took everything but her mind and her heart.   Her mind was whole but it was locked inside her body.   I often wondered what it felt like to live inside a body that didn’t respond to any of your commands.  How scary could that be?   How alone would that feel?

When Aunt Faye died it was bitter/sweet.   Bitter to say goodbye, sweet that we felt she was once again whole.     She wasn’t very old when that happened.     She didn’t get to play with grand babies and spend her golden years with Uncle Bob.   

Aunt Faye is just one person I know who could have benefited from stem cell research.  Lewis Black, our friend with Multiple Sclerosis, is another.   My foster brother, Bob Begay, who is quadriplegic is another.   When I first heard of stem cell research I was against it.   It sounded … spooky and felt evil.    I could see the prospects of rich, crazy people killing people to research so they could live forever.   I’ve seen horror movies with just that scenario.        But now?     Now I feel the research is good.  How it is done needs to be strictly regulated and monitored with reverence and the highest respect for human life in all of its stages.    Can humans be that honest and ethical in this kind of science and research?     I wish I felt a confidence in that because everyone deserves to have the hope this research offers.    I’d want it for my family, and I’d want it for yours.

People have asked what the Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)  says about stem cell research.    I found this statement: 

“While the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have not taken a position at this time on the newly emerging field of stem cell research, it merits cautious scrutiny. The proclaimed potential to provide cures or treatments for many serious diseases needs careful and continuing study by conscientious, qualified investigators. As with any emerging new technology, there are concerns that must be addressed. Scientific and religious viewpoints both demand that strict moral and ethical guidelines be followed.”