Day 7 - January 26
Sunday means browsing through an extra thick newspaper, church, brunch and outings--especially seasonal ones that take advantage of the weather's fortune. For students it's either a day off or a critical study time, for teachers, too often the evening to grade papers. For business it's the calm before the storm and for hospitals, well, let's say don't hold your breath waiting for anything of medical significance to happen.
To be fair I can only speak directly of Highland Hospital since it seemed sometimes to be father's weekend home. Alright, really fair would be to say that he spent several weekends at Highland, having arrived in the emergency room on Friday nights.
As a child Sundays meant church, the brightly colored comic section of the newspaper, home cooked Sunday dinner, and a very quiet afternoon. In those days our religion required no working on Sunday, to the extent of not operating a pair of scissors. We came the closest to being Amish for three or four hours on Sunday afternoon. Somehow that thread permeated the culture, at least reaching to the hospital! Father could be close to death, but the blood transfusion was planned for Monday morning.
On Highland Sundays I augmented father's restricted diet with strawberry ice cream sundaes from the basement cafeteria. I rearranged the furniture in his semi-private room, marveled at the incredible real estate deals in the Democrat and Chronicle, and swigged Dr. Pepper to stay awake. His friends came by to keep close, and to pray for healing. Bobby actually provided healing when he brought me Starbucks decaf-iced-venti-lattes.
Through long nights struggling to breathe, or days and nights of debilitating restless insomnia, father's preference is to carry on at home.
In recent months we lunched on Sundays at Bristol Harbour Resort, overlooking the southern end of Canandaigua Lake--one of those dream-like lookouts where the rustic lodge and fireplace hearth warm one's body and the sky-touched hills encircling the lake nurture one's soul. On one of those visits Harold and I decided to rent one of their condos on the lake for our family Christmas. Father was too weak for his usual flight to Chicago for the holiday. We would all come to him. It was the beginning of plans to include every possible desire, hope and dream of father's we could pack into seven days in December.
This "Day Seven," a Saturday, relieved not to be in the hospital, father and I watch his favorite TV show, Lawrence Welk. Then we open the Kodak Gallery photo book of our Christmas vacation. Smiling back from the pages we see Melinda helping her Grandpa with his final winning Uno hand, Matt watching his Grandpa scrape melted Raclette cheese onto a boiled potato, Harold M. and his girlfriend, Leslie enjoying the ribs father had dreamed of serving to them. In one photo father sips his breakfast borscht made just like his "Mama" by an immigrant friend from the same region in Poland. We see our whole family including Steven and his wife, Leslie, sharing gifts. And we see the Bristol hills setting, which not only reminds him of his teaching days in the Naples Valley and preaching in Bristol Springs, but somehow also tugs his memory of former Christmastimes with mother in Switzerland.
"Isn't it amazing, Cher, how everything we wanted to happen, happened that week?"
I discovered Bristol Harbour Resort on a Sunday. It was a quiet July afternoon, not even a scissor opening or closing...when something inside was still enough to know I should walk up to the front desk and rent a condo for Christmas. Thank God for Sundays.
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