Friends

I got a phone call from the compassionate service leader in our ward, the other night. She called me at about 9:30. She never calls that late. Then she told me that Ganell Newman had died. I had just been thinking about Ganell and how I hadn't heard from her in a while and surely her son would have let me know if she had passed on.



Let me tell you a bit about Ganell. She and her husband owned the 5 acre farm that shared our back yard fence. When we were looking at houses to buy, that was the major selling point for me- a farm to look out at instead of 20-40 houses. We had the horses and cows coming to the fence and the kids would feed them carrots. There was a ditch that ran along the fence line and the kids would rig up "fishing poles"- sticks with string tied to them- and fish for fish that didn't exist. But they loved it.



Ganell sort of adopted me and my kids, all of her grandkids lived 100's of miles away. Ganell loved children. She even volunteered at a local elementary school. Ganell always made sure that she brought by a batch of whatever she was baking that day. Or a grocery sack of whatever her husband had harvested from the garden. She would come out back and we would talk through the fence. She even loved our dog. Even when he would climb our wood pile and jump the fence into her yard. She always said he was a "happy Mary Poppins kind of dog".

I always knew when it was time to spray the fruit trees, or till the garden or plant , because I just watched the Newman's. Ganell had the most beautiful rosebushes and her yard always smelled wonderful when they bloomed.



Then her husband had a stroke and could no longer take care of the farm. They decided to sell the farm to the church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints) but the deal wouldn't go through until after Clarence had passed on, which he did in just a couple of months. That was a really hard time as I helped Ganell pack up some of her belongings. Then her youngest son and his wife were able to come help her with the rest, and she moved to a retirement community in Northern Utah to be next to them. Her home was bought by a developer who moved it a block and renovated it and a wonderful family live there now and a churchhouse was built on those 5 acres.


You know what the last thing Ganell did for me while she still lived in the home? She gave me every single one of her rose bushes. They now line the front flower bed at my home. I think of her every time I weed, prune or smell a flower from them. They are there with my children's great-grandmother's roses and I love them.

We promised to write each other and stay in contact. And we did. Then slowly I let life get in the way until the monthly letters became a card on her birthday and one at Christmas. And then it dawned on me the other day that I had not sent her a card for the last 2 Christmases and I hadn't heard from her in about that long as well. I made a mental note to be sure and write her the first of the year- when I wasn't so busy.

Then Wed. evening the compassionate service leader in my ward called to tell me that Monday Ganell was able to leave this world and return to her loving Heavenly Father and her husband and many other friends and family members. The funeral will be in our ward building, the one built where her house used to stand. I know she is happy to be with her mother again as well as her siblings. But she will still be missed here.