Mum has been handwriting prayers with such a frenzied fervour that we will likely soon be able to release the first edition copy of The Book of Jim, written by K. Craig (available soon at your local hospital waiting area)
Here is one she has asked me to share with everyone; should any of you wish to say it, use it, preach it, sing it, pray it, shout it or dance it out. Her penmanship alone is the stuff of miracles.
It is shocking to me how quickly we humans can adjust to a new state of normal. About one month and two days ago, our lives got ripped off track like a band-aid that was covering a completely inconceivable wound. This New Normal is not something we ever collectively imagined we could deal with, but yet somehow we cope.
I am utterly captured with how able dad is to accept his current New Normal with such calmness, patience and positivity. I hold my regard for him so high that I need nine billion step ladders and a crane just to say hi. I can only hope that in my life I could have a fraction of his strength of character when faced with fragile uncertainty.
New Normal now has inordinate amounts of hours being spent in a hospital waiting area that is home to some truly suspect art. These might be the least calming images known to man. So we laugh and pretend they don’t exist.
New Normal allows a surprising amount of room for old normal, whatever normal really is… that shit is totally overrated normal is great. And only because it must; life goes on and on in a house with a massive Jim Craig shaped hole. We laugh and smile because laughter is the best medicine, and those green leaves just have to keep getting greener, while tiny two year old nephews drive their friends around, with startling dexterity, in mini Jeeps.
New Normal also involves getting deliriously excited over any sign of life in Jim’s statue still body. This video was taken the day before yesterday, or some previous day that has leaked into this one, they are all quite similar to me. We have not seen any movement again today, but the doctors did say it would be intermittent. It is also not completely on his command as the pathways do need to learn to reconnect. He is not able to ‘feel’ his feet just yet, but apparently that is also a normal sequence of return. He says he is ‘telling his feet to move’ and they certainly were, via delayed reigniting synapses. I suggested he should also try telling his hair to grow back. He laughed.
We are very far from being out of the woods yet, but the foliage is actually not looking quite as thick and unfriendly anymore. These feet were made for dancing that that’s just what they’ll do…
Words can not sufficiently describe the splendour that is this video, sent for Jim by some of our amazing family over in England. Beadon clan, you have outdone yourselves.
We have seen only a handful of Christmases apart, but only because of family geography. (And by family geography I mean that Trudy refused to ever move out while I have crossed an ocean and timezone. She is so needy, it’s really no wonder that they love me the most.) In their lives together my parents have, to my knowledge, never spent a Christmas apart. Mum was determined that today would be no different. Very early this morning we sent Jim his daily self-prescribed concoction of beet, carrot, apple, celery and ‘mystery-plant-from-garden’ juice, that he quite unendingly demands to have, because apparently unlike hospital food, it is “good for him and makes him strong” I reckon that if this juice makes those toes move, then I will tap the juicer right to his IV and run it on high-speed. Again, I make pictures for a living not medical decisions.
We went down to have a lovely visit with dad and brought mum her a plate of christmas breakfast, along with a plate of cupcakes for all the nurses, baked by the delicate hands of my sister with a notable amount of assistance from a box of Betty Crocker.
A lifelong friend of Kareen’s stopped by to show that when you can’t make it to church, the church comes to you. 
The ever adorable Dr. Jose being subjected to yet another family photo shoot.
We set up, with some fair amount of technical shenanigans, a live feed this morning for Jim to watch the grand-babies open gifts, listen to us sing trini christmas songs loudly for Aunty Lorna and some of our English family. There was the usual chorus of incessant talk-laughter-squeals while opening bottles of bubbly to make our breakfast orange juice more effervescent. Trust me, those glasses were deliciously vivacious.
So all in all pretty much a typical scene, except for the empty parent shaped vacuum voids of Dad growling like a pirate and Mum dancing around in some sort of illuminated reindeer hat or bedazzled bosom brooch. (A blog for my Mum could easily be called allofthebosoms.com, but that is quite likely already taken by a completely different genre of online entertainment, I digress…)
We are by nature a frivolous crew and Christmas is just another sugary spike to our hyper tendencies for maximum fun possible. The depths of ridiculousness knows no bounds and for anyone that has shared, experienced, been subjected to our family at christmas, you can always expect that all and everything can happen. Like this did a few years ago…
Growing up mum would hide some of our gifts and make it into a scavenger hunt for us to find, leaving fabulous rhymes and clues for us to follow when trying to hunt down the package. Once she made the clues so wonderfully cryptic that Trudy cried and gave up the search, she was 14 and the present was hidden on the ceiling fan. Best ever.
As a child, if you asked me at any time of the year, what I wanted for Christmas, the answer would always be for the same toy as in the letter I would write to Santa that December. I went through several years and almost the entire population of CareBear stuffed animals like that. What a throughly focused and determined completely boring child I was. If you asked Trudy what she wanted the list could change hourly and daily, encompassing the full range of anything that had caught her eye that minute, day, week. The full extent of her ADHD intelligence has never actually been thoroughly diagnosed.
We have grown up, our worlds and lives have changed, but if you ask either of us today (or evermore) what we have ever really wanted for Christmas the answer would resoundingly be the same. To be healthy and all together. These last few weeks has granted me (and us all) with a very grateful new set of eyes to realize how truly blessed we are. The powerful love we have fostered will forevermore put into perspective that all you really need in life is health and love. Everything else is a trinket.
I would give anything to see this, right here, right now again. And I expect you all would too. Merry Christmas!
Dad slept for such a great portion of the day yesterday that I began to wonder if he had become narcoleptic. Sleep is healing, so all that he can get right now is delightful, plus it is so great to see him comfortable and calm.
Here is a video of some, much more subtle, movement as he was resting after physiotherapy. This might have actually been a repulsion on his part to having his toes tickled by his sister, Lorna.
Trudy just called and was happy to point out I have been hideously truant in my blog updating duties last night and this morning. I assured her that this was in direct correlation to the tractor load sheer quantity of wine that my friend Robyn and I consumed late into the night. Poor Aunty Lorna had to be subjected to our giggles and laughter while she tried to slumber. Wine flavoured laughter is the best medicine.
Today is another good day. Dads mood and mindset is decidedly determined and incredibly upbeat, despite the multitude of odds. His will and spirit is going to be half of this battle and right now he is being very positive about it all. This guy, seriously! When I grow up I want to be half as strong as he is, but with not as much facial hair.
He keeps saying, well mouthing, “I am going to get through this” Yes you are chap, yes you are. We had a mini photo shoot yesterday as someone requested a current photo of him to take to his prayer group on Sunday. We had to do several shots as he vetoed the 1st few on account of not thinking that they were taken on his good side. It struck me as quite remarkable to be vain even while having what looks like a snorkel coming out of ones neck.
I told him to smile, but with a modest appreciation of the sombreness of the situation, best not to look too happy and chipper. He of course made a series of totally ridiculous faces. We opted for a full body shot to make sure those toes were included in the prayers. We still need all the prayers we can get to keep the long and uncertain road of recovery smoothly paved.
Trudy and Lorna are at the hospital today and I am at home spending time with the small humans. I took them swimming in the pool earlier, though I learned that swimming is a broad term to 2 and 6 year olds. The reality more involved a constant bombardment of naked boy children jumping and clambering on me while ensuring a steady spray of water made contact with my eyeballs, eardrums and inner nostrils. I soon observed that whatever exact section of water I happened to be in must have seemed most prime to them. A delightful time, was had by all. The tinier of the two humans is sleeping right now while I eat all the children snacks, nourish the entire mosquito population and let the other mini man-child endlessly watch cartoons. I got this whole parenting thing under my thumb, it is totes easy…
Our family property address, the house my granny lived in all her life, is called Hope Cottage. When Jim and Kareen built their (spanish style) house on the sprawlingly steep land higher up the hill from the house my mum grew up in, they called it Esperanza Alta, spanish for High Hopes. It struck me today that collectively we must be a pretty hopeful bunch of humans. (It’s basically our address, we can’t help it.)
High Hopes, above Hope Cottage. We are holding onto whatever shimmery lashings of hope we can get right now. Guided only by the glimpses of tiny prayer filled chandeliers lighting all that is goodness. Hope that everything is going to all work out somehow. Hope that he will be able to use his broken body again. Hope that we can get through this; because I know that he can…because either way, he will be ok.
Hope upon hope upon hope of miracles. Prayers and thoughts of light and love.
There are no more significant changes in his current state of non-feeling and immobility from his elbows down, his limbs are frozen in post-operation time. We can only wish that like the ice age, this too will melt and pass.
Dad’s sister, Lorna arrived last night and has been acclimatizing to the messy humid lushness and to seeing her usually locomotive combustion engine driven brother in a very, very silent sedentary state. It is simply fantastic to have her here and we all feel a bit more relief to be able to be together and to have another set of eyes to contemplate, ears to process and arms to hug. She also proved to be very apt at holding doors and being an overall ray of fresh energy.
We had an in-depth family meeting with the doctors this morning and Dr. M, as always, is very factual and frank, he has a wealth of experience and information but has never really had a case like my dad. Jm is a very unusual man. He did have to sombrely report that he had higher hopes to have seen more progress in movement by now. But there really is no telling before the 6-week mark as to what the long-term prognosis will be for full, functional healing and so we can only wait. (Ignite tiny chandeliers ignite!)
I once had to make a sculpture project for art class, I must have been around 8 or 9. I got some clay and shaped it into a camel, it was a flat, two-dimensional piece of awesomeness. He had a sweet long camel neck, lanky camel legs and some totally super happening camel humps. I lay him out flat on a tray and put him in the oven to harden. My dad came home that night and reckoned that someone had obviously made a pretty epic cookie and proceed to try to eat it, camel legs first. Needless to say awesome Mr. Camel didn’t fair well, quite likely exasperated by the fact that I had probably found the clay somewhere outside in our garden (high quality) and that the drying process was not exactly of a kilns degree of accuracy (baked that guy at 360•)
He felt pretty terrible about trying to eat my art project and there was some failed effort to glue it back, but sadly Mr. Camel lay in the better parts of a crumbly mess. Jim has always taken in charge and been in control. Why, if he sees a camel shaped cookie, gosh darn he is gonna eat that bastard. Seeing him again today in such an unfamiliar capacity of non action is shocking all over again, and it makes me love him that much more. Because he is so strong and he is trying so hard, under very taxing circumstances, to keep his spirits up, even if it’s only for us right now.
Trudy seems best able to understand his silent lip-reading-required-voice while I just guess wildly in the dark; “Dad, you want a Potato wagon?” “you like a house of porridge pies?” “bat fingers?” I have always been quite rubbish at lip reading. It’s my job.
In setting him up with an iPad movie this afternoon, it took mum and I way too long in an overly extended game of charades and alphabet spelling to figure out that he wanted his glasses and not to watch a show about eyes or spying (We have both had some long nights, so are not really firing all brain cells effectively)
We are hoping to get him out of the ICU and onto the ward sooner than later as his recovery is far more likely to be productive to his mood and overall well-being out of such an isolated environment.
The limitation is the ventilator, as he needs to stay on that to ensure his lungs stay clear and pneumonia free. We are looking into potentially sourcing a second hand one to buy… I mean who doesn’t want to own a ventilation machine? “Lung Party at Our House, whaoooo!”
Still so many uncertain avenues ahead but one more day down. One more.
Many people on this flight seem to have taken the baggage allowances as more of a passing suggestion than an airline requirement.
One family of two adults and a toddler collectively have nine pieces of luggage. I am guessing math isn’t their thing. His mother has shovelled a very steady stream of what looks like a sugar coated donut into his mouth at each indication of his boredom at how uneventful standing in a long line is. I can’t help but wish someone would shovel food into my mouth when I was bored and also simultaneously hope that this sugar laced child will not be sitting next to me on the flight.
I am checked in and set to arrive at 5am and am keen to see everyone again. Also I expect that dad is likely quite bored with Trudy’s company now and will be most certainly thrilled to see his favourite daughter again. Don’t worry dad, I am on my way.
