This is Sara’s story, but before I can tell it, I need to write a little about her parents.

Jason, my grandson, graduated high school and got a job in Everett, repairing engines, which he loved. He also loved to fish, and, with his friend Chuck, left for Eastern Washington to fish for the big ones. All went well until Jason discovered this beautiful girl fishing with her Grandfather. He fell head over heels for her right then, and, as his friend later said, “I knew he was a goner”. Dana must have felt the same way about Jason because she said to him, “I thought I’d never meet you.” Dana was still in high school, and would graduate the next year. Jason spent every weekend at Deer Park, where Dana lived. He knew he couldn’t keep driving his old pick up truck back and forth, so he finally bought a Triumph motorcycle, which he rode back and forth, finding that he could make it to her house in record time. Eventually, he finally found a small trailer for rent in her area, and then looked for a job in that area. One place Jason always stopped at on his way through Spokane was this machine shop, and every time he asked whether they needed any help or were hiring, and they always said, “No.” One time they told him he was so persistent that they would try him for awhile. Jason was there for eighteen years until they went out of business, with him ending up as shop manager.

After Jason and Dana married they moved to Spokane where Sara was born. They always enjoyed fishing, and would take Sara, when she was just a baby, and camp out for the weekend. On one of these trips, Dana contacted Meningitis from mosquitoes. That Sunday evening, she complained of a bad headache, and later on that evening, she was screaming in pain. Jason drove her to the emergency room at the hospital, where the doctor told him if he had waited another hour she would have died. As it turned out, she came close to dying several times. When she finally came home, she was still having terrible headaches, but there was nothing more the doctors could do except put her on stronger medication. The doctor said that the reasoning side of her brain had been badly damaged. She still lives with the unbearable pain, which comes and goes as it pleases. Doctors have told her there is nothing more they can do for her.