Ok, I realize that the majority of the world posts their "I'm thankful for" list before or during Thanksgiving. I'm a little behind. I'm behind because I was a bit busy. This Thanksgiving struck a new chord of thankfulness for the Davie-Chaney-Bremner-Whitson family. It is painfully obvious that the center of our family is my ridiculously strong Grandma. None of us know what we would do without her, and that thought has begun to enter my mind more frequently than I ever wanted to admit. Every day she is more and more impressive as she continues to fight with Breast Cancer and shows no signs of quitting. We've been having our ups and downs here lately, thankfully the ups have out-numbered the downs, but the downs are always heart wrenching. My Grandma went through her radiation treatment like a champ and didn't complain once. She had 7 straight weeks of 5 days a week treatment and she found the best way to look on the positive side. She never needed to worry about having a shortage of drivers to take her to and from treatments. The downside/upside to her treatments were they were about 30-45 minutes away from her house and the appointment was around lunch time. The giant benefit of this timing is that the drive meant we had good solid one-on-one conversations with Grandma to and from her treatments, plus most all of us would stop on the way home and have lunch of form. This meant that we would get a good few hours of just Grandma time and could learn something new, re-live old stories, or just hang out and catch up on things going around us. This was definitely a blessing in disguise! She finished her treatments about 3 weeks ago, perfect timing for the holidays, but this lead to a new obstacle. Grandma was put on a blood thinner to prevent clotting, well.....it didn't work. Tuesday of Thanksgiving week she had an ultrasound on her leg because it had swelled and was getting painful and it turned out that she had an extensive DVT. This is frightening on many levels because a DVT can break off and throw mini clots to your heart, brain, or lungs and cause all kinds of problems, the main fear would be death. This scared us like no other. She got to stay in the hospital for a couple of nights but then was released just in time to come home for Thanksgiving dinner/lunch.
My sister and I had come down on Wednesday night so we could start some of the food prep. Grandma had her watchful eye on us all the way from the hospital by her calling us, and us calling her, about 10 times lol. She would call to make sure we didn't forget something, then we would call her to clarify something we thought we remembered but turned out she always made and we were really clueless. We did make her a little sad one time because mom called her to have her listen to Sam and I make the turkey sing and dance. Yes, we are 28 and 23 years old and we act like 5 year olds, deal with it. The story behind this is that last year Sam and I were put in charge of prepping the turkey and some how, SOME WAY, we managed to de-spine the turkey. We THOUGHT we were taking out the neck, but when we finally tore it out an hour later we realized there were vertebrae and it wasn't nearly as pliable as it should have been. Then we laughed so hard we almost cried. Well this year we were trying to include Grandma in our shenanigans and it really just turned out to make her miss being part of the festivities in person. The positive side is that we didn't burn the house down, and we didn't have Thanksgiving without Grandma. Sam stayed the night at Grandma's house so she could start the turkey and other cooking in the morning. I went back to mom's house for the night to help her with things. In the morning when mom went into town to help Sam, I was supposed to be driving right behind her, but I decided to go to the hospital and I was not leaving until Grandma was coming home with me. Well, about 2 hours after I got to the hospital Grandma was free to go. We had a few hoops to jump through because of her meds, but she came home! That afternoon when we were all finally gathered around for food we had the most emotional start to Thanksgiving ever. We had twenty-one people gathered in our living room. That's right, TWENTY-ONE. Grandma stood at the top of the circle wanting everyone to hold hands and said she wanted to thank everyone for everything they did, the cooking, driving, visiting, and such. But not much more got out beyond thanking us for everything and that we mean so much to her. Then she cried, and we all cried. My cousin Shawn said grace right away and all you heard were sniffles as he was thanking God for our blessings of having a great family, bringing Grandma home for Thanksgiving, and allowing us to all be together and enjoy this food. There wasn't a dry eye in the house after that.
My family is special. A few people have told me that my family is weird, I'm down with that. I am a firm believer that if the way my family works is weird, then I certainly do not want to be normal. I love that we can all hang out randomly, we don't need an excuse. I love that we've grown up together and fight and love more like siblings than a giant group of cousins. We have a stronger bond than most families and I love every bit of it. A few people (outside the family) have made the comment that after Grandma passes that our family will probably drift apart, just like normal families, and we won't see each other nearly as much. Grandma is our rock, and we are her rock, but we also have grown up together in such a way that we have the strongest foundation that I have ever seen. There will unfortunately be a time when we will not physically have Grandma with us, but that won't change us getting together for holidays as a giant family, and it won't change the fact that she'll still be with us. Right now our main family gatherings are; Summer Birthdays Party, Pumpkin Carving, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Those are the ones that happen every year and are gatherings that I look forward to. I know these will continue, but we will just be gathering at a different house. But we will all still be together.
A small side-step. My family is weird. Shawn asked if I would run with my younger cousin, Titus, on Friday for a 5k. Sure! I text Red, who was still in West Chester because he had to work later, and asked him to grab my winter running gear. Friday evening Titus, who is 10 years old, and myself ran our first 5k together. He had ran a practice 5k on Monday in 27 minutes and wanted to beat that, so we ran a 26:28. He had way more left than I anticipated, so we sprinted out the finish. Next 5k we do I'm definitely pushing him more. I didn't want to kill him, and figured that as long as he was running behind me that was all the faster he wanted to go, next time will be much faster. I know he has a 24 in him!! :D
For all my family who read this, I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU!
Take care!
Aaaaah Shannon - Thank you for another good cry. :/
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite things about Grandma has always been her traditions. The ham sandwiches and baked beans at Christmas, her summer party with the funny games, the cards she always sends the kids with $1 for even the most insignificant holidays, How she always tells each one of us that we are special. I have come to love and expect those things from her. Yet as stubborn as she is, and as faithful as she likes to be with her routines and traditions, she can be the most flexible person in the world - even though it is going against her nature. She always says, "Oh well, no big deal," and accommodates whomever is changing things.
That is what I was thinking about as I read your post. Someday we will have to keep these traditions alive, but be flexible too, like you said, at someone else's house...
Love you Shannon.