When we spoke he said simply “I miss cooking” in the most animated, dramatic way I have ever seen. Every facial muscle employed; stuck in the worst quandary of excitement consumed by frustration. Sort of like this face, but with much more angst and a lot less Planet Earth. If he could get up and run, his kitchen would be the first place we would run to.

He most misses making meals for his family and friends. Jim is a pretty exceptional cook.
It was 3:30pm and he listed, for the better part of a half hour, all the things he would create:

He would first sit by the pool with a glass of Bubbly, some crackers, blue cheese, hot peppers from his garden and some….peaches….

“did you say peaches, Dad?”

“yes, fresh peaches”

…ok, fresh peaches.

He told me about all the vegetable pies with flakey pastry, buttery velvet melting in the mouth. About the apple pies, stuffed with cinnamon steamy goodness; as if directly from the Garden of Eden. Fresh baked bread and home-made pizza crusts.

I fear that when he is ever able to get back to his kitchen we may all become morbidly obese, because he will never stop cooking again.
He told me, and I knew because I was fed for so many years, how the roasted potatoes would be golden and crunchy on the edges, the sautéed carrots needed to have a sweet crispness with a buttery garlic finish, the broccoli would be vividly steamed to perfection, like a lawn of sea salt crusted tiny trees. How the tomato and cucumber salad would luxuriate in a delicious pool of vinegary herb heaven. He gave me the step-by-step specific, special standards that a rack of lamb would need to be served flawlessly, and how he must do a quick final sear on each side to caramelize it to superb crusted precision; bowls of fresh mint sauce waiting, drizzle ready on the side.

He crossed his eyes and whispered a series of searing noises with his silent mouth to demonstrate exactly how lush the outside would be, and it took everything I had not to jump on the bed and hug him because it was so ridiculously adorable.

I told him that if he could get up and make that lamb right away, that I would eat it all. He knows that I have not eaten meat for over 14 years. He laughed and said he would make me some salmon.

“No, really Dad, if you come home right now and cook that lamb, I will eat the entire thing and all of its relatives, get up, let’s go home”

he grins “Ok, deal”

Mom reckoned that if she did some cleaning around the hospital that they might knock a couple of bucks off of our bill. So far it’s not working, but those ugly waiting room frames are pretty squeaky clean of late. She is so OCD such a busy lass.

I asked dad how he is able to stay so strong. I am trying to learn, for my betterment, how he is able to be so calm and patient in a situation that would likely crush most people. He said that he is approaching this time as a simple pause in his life. A time to consider, think and accept. A set of circumstances beyond his or any of our control, dictated by powers beyond our comprehension. A big hospital bed shaped pause button. I wish that we could just pause time altogether, the sunset said no.

It’s so hard to celebrate when someone so integral to life and hilarity is not present. It’s so hard to celebrate when all of our minds are collectively saturated with thoughts of him, and how he is doing and if he is ok and when he will be better and if… and what…. and what-if.

We don’t ponder on the what-if’s, instead we do what he loves best and celebrate life. So we all donned some of his ridiculously hideous brightly printed shirts, that he wears with religious commitment, and went out in the delicious sunshine salty ocean air and celebrated together.

Our hearts are on pause with him, but our lives and spirits are fuelling him to keep fighting so we can soon all wear ugly fabric together. Unite Hawaiian Prints, Unite!

My six-year-old nephew called at 6:30 am the other morning to ask when I was coming over to play. I told him to give me five minutes, and as he was hanging up the phone I heard him ask “Mum, how long is five minutes?”

How long is time really?

Sad times are syrupy, sticky-slow when you hurt and joy can hurdle by like warm wind in your hair when life is all too much fun. None of us know how long Dad will take to heal, we just know that he must and we will champion his every step of the journey.

The hope is to move him from ICU to the ward and then potentially home once we can get him set up on the new ventilator, which should arrive in a week. We don’t know how long that will be or how much time any of this might take. But really now, all of this time, is a tiny drop in life and we are taking each ‘five minutes’ as they unfold. While we all want to know an exact exit strategy the next steps are certainly not as clear as this sign. (Which incidentally seems to be of a man with one very long leg trying to escape some aggressively large letters.) Our sign will come when the time is right.

Tonight as this year blankets itself out and into a brand new next, we are just happy to still have time, love and each other. Happy New Year everyone, I hope everyone will ring this bad boy in Jim Craig styles.

Let’s light up the fire pit and shoot off some cannons!

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.

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.

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 1^st 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…