The Day Faith Told Me About; Part
4 Christmas Cookies at Thanksgiving
The
two most important days in a person’s life are the day you’re
born and the day you find out why. (Mark Twain)
Read: James 1:12-17
I’m not sure what it was, blind
faith, pure faith, denial, disbelief, the morphine drip, pure love
overpowering all else, my upbringing in this church, or maybe it was
as they thought; I was just plain nuts. Jeri and I had after all just
survived being run into by a 3,000 lb steel object racing in head on
at over 75 mph; the driver of which was passed out with his foot on
the gas.
For many years Jeri would get
together with her nieces, her sister-in-law Lotti, Auntie Marge,
Josie-Bell, and of course her mom and they would all make their
Christmas Cookies at our house around Thanksgiving. Flour and sugar
and ingredients would fly everywhere, the dough for each type and
batch had to be adjusted until “just right”; all under the
supervision of the senior cookie makers Mom, Marge and Josie. The
years passed and so did the elders; it was up to Jeri to supervise.
As I lay with a morphine drip to
counter the pain of a broken hip, arm, and foot, and being black and
blue all over, it took several days for the various teams of doctors
to explain to me all the things that had been damaged on my wife, the
most precious thing in my life. At first it was the multiple compound
fractures of both femurs and the missing bone fragments, and then it
was the multiple fractures of the pelvis. Then came the news of the
crushed foot, the ankle that was destroyed, the broken hand, and the
multiple fractures of both arms. Of course the most frightening was
the multiple and open fractures of her head and face. One doctor told
me her head x-ray looked like the inside of a Rice Krispie, too many
fractures to even count. Of course the 2 spinal fractures, the
crushed sternum and 14 broken ribs didn’t help and neither did the
news that the ribs punctured her lungs and cut her liver and the
never ending internal bleeding whose source was a mystery was cause
for more alarm.
Through all this time I never
doubted, not even for a second, my every thought was that my wife
would recover and we would come to thank the Lord in His house here
in GPUMC. I may have become numb to it all, I just prayed, out loud,
to myself, all the while I was awake, in my sleep, all I did was
pray. When the trauma team had to bear the news of more complications
I would reassure them that they were not to be too concerned, “just
do your best, she’ll be fine soon enough” I’d say. Then as each
piece of news came in I would reassure them that they were getting
all worked up over nothing, “give it time, she’ll be fine” I’d
say. I learned a year later that the trauma and ER doctors had gotten
some people in as bad a condition as Jeri into the ICU but had never
until now seen anyone this bad leave the ICU alive.
So as I would reassure them not to
worry because she’s pure Italian on one side and 100% Irish on the
other and that “in 6 months or so She’ll be in here telling You
what she will and won’t do," they’d walk out mumbling things
like, “he’s in denial," “he didn’t understand a word we
said," or “I sure hope he’s right."
One day about 10 days after the
crash when I came to see her, as she still lay motionless in an
induced coma, there was a young pretty blonde resident doctor who had
just experienced her first ischemic stroke victim, unfortunately it
was Jeri. The young doctor was all aflutter to tell me about it. She
couldn’t wait to show me the CAT scans and all the dark parts of
the brain that were gone now and that little light colored part
there, that’s the part that may still be OK. This was all new and
very exciting for her.
In 1980 Don Henley wrote a song
entitled “Dirty Laundry” about the evening news anchors, and in
it he mentions the “bubble headed bleach blonde who comes on at 5;
she can tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eye.”
All I could see was Don Henley’s fictitious character in this young
doctor. I’d had enough. From somewhere within, “nutty Ron” came
out. I wheeled around in my wheelchair and wagging my finger and
flailing my arms, I explained in no uncertain terms that “I’m Not
a Doctor! I can’t read a CAT scan! For all I know you’ve got the
contrast set wrong and this is all OK! But I do know this, Come
Thanksgiving she’s gonna be baking Christmas Cookies!!! You hear
Me?!?, Christmas Cookies at Thanksgiving!!!” As someone quickly
grabbed the handles of my wheelchair and wheeled me down the hall to
my room, all they heard was me hollering “Christmas Cookies at
Thanksgiving!!!” That’s when they sent in “the Shrink." I
had a rallying call, and a new goal. They quickly determined I was
nuts. I quickly determined to prove myself right; at any cost.
Ten months later, at home preparing
for the first of several revision surgeries, we were planning another
long stay in hospitals. With Thanksgiving only a week away, a few
girls and I put the ingredients in the bowl in Jeri’s lap as she
called them out while seated in her wheelchair. With ½ of one eye,
the other blind, with only one hand, she mixed as best as she could.
We made Christmas Cookies at Thanksgiving, put them in several
Christmas Cookie tins and included cards with thanks and love, and
delivered them to as many of the trauma team and ICU team as we could
find. Jeri stood from her wheelchair to hand each one out to someone
who saved her life. With no recollection of it, Jeri was meeting
these people for the first time. To a person, they were all shocked,
amazed, some cried, all were Very Happy and had wondered for months,
“what ever happened to that girl with the nutty husband.” “Nutty
Ron” went back where he belongs.
Blind faith, pure love, being a
little nuts, having the incontrovertible belief that what one is
praying for will come to pass; whatever it was, or is, I’ll
continue to believe in miracles, and the Power of Prayer. Thanks to
all of you for yours.
Prayer: May we always have the Faith
to believe our Prayers.
Ron Draper; Christmas Day 2015
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