Susan Scheufler
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Susan traveling

Susan Scheufler Farris

1106 Barry Drive

Lebanon, IN 46052-1291

765-714-5714

[email protected]

Posted 5/4/18

The biggest news is that I’ve retired from teaching high school English for 36 years. While I don’t miss sliding to work on days that should have been called as snow days or grading 120 papers in two weeks, I do miss my kids. Mark and I are now the grandparents of a seven year old, Miles, and he has added more to our already blessed lives. All three kids graduated from high school (No more chaperoning school trips to NYC or freezing watching soccer matches!) and are finishing up with college. Hopefully they will start paying their own cell phone bills soon.

I’ve been fortunate to travel with students to England and Scotland, as well as to see my siblings in Houston, St. Louis, and Phoenix. I attended my uncle’s WWII reunion in Washington, D.C. and learned more about his final days. It was great hearing these 93-year-old vets saying that they would be back for the next reunion. Mark, I, and Sean (the youngest) flew out to San Francisco, rented a car and took the scenic drive to LA. We’ve taken the entire family to my husband’s favorite place, Disney World to celebrate my retirement. I live to travel.

Meanwhile, I’ve become addicted to Ancestry.com and HGTV (House Hunters International, of course). I’m beginning to write for myself and love to edit my dad’s home movies. I’m really finding that being a stay-at-home wife is rather boring and I find myself talking to our two Yorkies. I guess I need to find a new “major” or become a Walmart Greeter.

Posted 2013

Susan at her daughter's wedding

I'm still in Lebanon, teaching at the same school (Western Boone), married to the same husband, Mark, and dreaming about traveling the world.  The changes in my life have pretty standard for most of us. 

My parents are both gone.  Mom checked into the hospital on a Sunday night, thinking she had the swine flu, but it was her heart.  She died November 9, 2009, the Weds. before surgery on Friday.  Since we thought she would live forever (sheer determination), it really caught the family off guard.  Dad had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year earlier and we believed he would be the first to go.  Even after having to go on dialysis, he survived another 2 1/2 years, dying two days after Father's Day and three days after his 87th birthday (6-18-12).   

So I now know how to mark clothes for a nursing home stay, the passwords for exiting  two rehab facilities in Lafayette, and I know most of the nurses at the IU cancer pavilion as well as the IU hospital in Lafayette.  I have told myself when my kids complain about my driving, it might be a sign to give up the keys.  I have also promised myself two things:  never to talk to strangers about any bodily functions and to clean out my house before I die.  Mark and I had to renovate to sell Mom and Dad's house.  While we found vintage clothing, the sorting and renovating of the house took over a year.  While I know this is normal for life, I still miss their phone conversations and hugs and wish I weren't an orphan at 57. 

On the good side, our daughter, Meghan, was married the summer of 2009 and both of my parents were still here.  Planning a wedding is stressful, but planning your child's wedding is much more so.  I'm so glad that our other two children are male.  For their weddings, I'll show up in my tasteful mother-of-the-groom dress and just smile at the chaos.  Anyway, she and her husband are the parents of an active child, Miles, and that means that Mark and I are GRANDPARENTS.  Wow!  It is so cool to play with a toddler and then send him home when he's grumpy.  My daughter is the one toilet-training him - not me.  I love the way he says "yellow" and his fascination with his uncle's old Brio train set.  Being around him makes up for all the teenage years with his mother!

Our oldest son, Matthew, is still in college and a little lost right now but I have faith in him and God.  We don't have a basement for him to live in and he thinks living in Lebanon is a fate worse than death.  Our youngest son, Sean, will be a senior in high school.  While I didn't plan to have a kid at the age of 40, having Sean has kept us going to soccer games and choir concerts,  Unfortunately, we're a little slow for him on anything technological; other than his complaining about that, he's a good kid.  One more year and we'll have freedom and maybe then we can travel!