It started with an element of confusion, with a text on Tuesday night that I wasn't expected to see until Wednesday morning. As a result, I thought that Jesse had collapsed on Monday night, and perhaps slightly underestimated how dire his situation was. After all, his grandpa would surely have communicated with us right away if it had been life-threatening. By Wednesday afternoon, I understood what had happened with the initial text, and we went to the hospital in the evening to see this young man who we still think of as the little boy who had spent so much time in our home.
If we hadn't understood already, we knew on seeing him that he was in the fight of his life, but were still hopeful that he might recover. His grandparents soon arrived back from out of town, and we stayed at the hospital several hours to be with them and with the rest of his family and their friends who were there.
On Thursday I didn't really interpret the family's reported signs of "improvement" in the same way that some of them did. I knew from experience that eye and body movement alone were not evidence that he was recovering. I agreed to stay with our grandchildren so that my wife could go visit the hospital again. She had been the one who'd spent so many hours providing child care for him and his sister when they were children; most of that time I was at work. Our youngest worked a double that day, so grandma had been watching kiddos all day. I figured it was best for me to give her a break, and the kids and I enjoyed some fun trampoline time together. I guess that might have been too soon after dinner, though, for our youngest grandson, who ended up being sick just before mom got there to pick them up after her shift. He was sick again during the night, but better the next day.
Friday was a scheduled off day for our youngest daughter, which ended up being a good thing when we got panicked phone calls from our oldest daughter in the afternoon indicating that her oldest son had been in a wreck. She sounded pretty hysterical, so I left work early to meet her at the hospital. All my friends already know the details, and I won't embarrass my grandson by sharing them here. But his injury was pretty serious, and his recovery will be a long road that will probably never return him to 100%, except by God's grace and healing power.
Friday night was also the beginning of the parish festival, and I had some Marriage Encounter brochures and schedules to drop off, so I left the hospital in time to make that happen. My bride had driven separately, so she hung out a while longer waiting for the results of the surgery. I don't remember the last time I wasn't able to attend Benediction at the start of festival, but I was able to drop off brochures in time and then, by the time Teri got there, had our registration forms for the next morning's 5k ready for our signatures. I then went home to let the dog relieve himself, and went back to the festival when Teri asked me to deliver a couple things she needed - decent shoes, socks, her arch support tape. It turned out that when I got there she decided she was ready to leave so we could visit with our grandson at the hospital, but at least I got to see the younger set of grandchildren there with their mom - her oldest of whom in particular was none too happy to have to listen to her instead of being able to run free.
We checked in with our oldest daughter on the way to the hospital; she was in the room when we parked, but left before we got upstairs. We didn't stay long, as it seemed as if our grandson was drifting off to sleep and we were pretty tired, too. We learned the next morning that, while his pain was being managed pretty well, he was still pretty much unable to sleep most of the night because of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment