So, of course, after publishing that last post at around two in the morning, I was awakened about five hours later by a phone call from my sister, telling me that my mom was in the ER. Thus began yet another Christmas that will go down in the Davis family book as "pretty crappy" and/or "in the top 3 of worst-ever Christmases."
I was in the midst of what I thought was going to be a 6-day buffer/recovery period before I had planned on heading home, but what can you do? I grabbed my dirty laundry, collected my unwrapped Christmas presents, and made the now too-familiar emergency drive home (in under 3 hours, I swear I wasn't speeding), wondering what would happen next.
As it turned out, not only did my mom have issues with her heartbeat, but her stress test showed a possible blockage. Since the small hospital where my mom lives only really does things like stitching up kitchen knife accidents, leech therapy, handing out "them newfangled anti-biotics," and horse medicine*, she was transferred to a bigger hospital in Midland. She had a heart catheterization done, and ended up getting 3 stents. One of her main arteries was nearly 90% blocked. We were thankful she hadn't had a heart attack, which would have been pretty likely if this problem had not been caught. We were also thankful to blow that joint with Momma in tow in time to get home by Christmas Eve.
It's all a little fuzzy now, partially due to the exhaustion from stress and driving and hospital-wrangling, but I think we spent Christmas watching "It's a Wonderful Life," on TV, and then took naps, even though we had gotten up late. At that point, we did not even care if we ever opened our Christmas presents, we were just glad no one was dead. Our actual "Christmas celebration" happened about 4 or 5 days later, in stages; one night we had dinner with my sister's boyfriend, then a day or two after that we actually opened presents and had a nice breakfast. Bonus: it had finally snowed by then, so we had a white Christmas. Also a bonus: we had a much more relaxing Christmas, since we weren't on a time schedule--we'd get to the end of the day and say, "Well, are we ready yet?" If the answer was no, we'd just wait another day, do as much as we could, and eventually the presents were wrapped and we were ready to celebrate. It happened, eventually.
At this point in the story, I'm supposed to say something such as, "And we enjoyed our presents, but more than that, we had the gift of Mother being safely home, and of each other's good company, by the hand of our Almighty Father, who walketh with us through the valley of the shadow of Death and hospital cafeteria foods. God bless us, every one!"
Of course this was true. I was also pretty excited about the Kindle Mom got me - she had no idea I wanted one (badly!), so it was a big surprise. Thanks, Mom! Maybe I should tell her in person, since I am pretty sure she does not read this blog either, which might be a good thing, actually.
The point is this: Um. I guess there is no good sitcom-style conclusion, other than to say, I hope your Christmas was better than ours. If it wasn't, I hope you can realize somehow that Christ was present, whether you were aware of it or not.
And that is what I did for Christmas vacation.
*Ok, not really, it just feels like that sometimes.
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