The Drowning Fall
Holidays and hospitals are tightly woven pieces in my family's fabric
The smoke filled the “breakfast room” on Saturday mornings when we visited my grandparents’ house in Longview. The room, just off the kitchen, was more of a nook. It contained a small table and a large radio that by this point had become a piece of furniture that no one felt the urge to move.
My father and grandfather sat and talked over breakfast while my grandmother worked in the kitchen. My mom was across town, visiting her father and stepmother, mercifully sparing her then only child the trip to visit the World War II veteran and the POW (piece of work) he had married and inflicted on all of us.
Even while eating, the cigarettes were lit and slowly burning in the half-full ashtrays, the air pungent with the nasal mix of tar, bacon grease, and coffee that my grandmother brewed on the stove.
On this day — I could not have been more than 4 or 5 — a visitor stopped by, adding to the conversation and to the cloud. I remember drawing in a deep breath, knowing even then that the cocktail of smells would stay with me forever. Later that day, when my grandfather drove my grandmother to the grocery store, I remember asking my her to buy me candy cigarettes, joint-like sticks of sugar that allowed me to be like them.
Flash forward 10 years: My grandfather is in the hospital. It’s one of many stays. He pauses when he speaks, whistling through his lips as he tries to catch his breath. He inhales oxygen with the same vigor he once did with a cigarette, the tubes coming out of his nose. COPD, the acronym that summed up his five-plus decades of smoking, is his eventual death sentence.
These memories, vivid and clear, invaded my brain in the middle of the night last week, broken only by the sound of the beeping machine. At some point, I had rolled over, and the line of IV fluids that were entering my arm had become crimped, hence the beeping.
Despite my best efforts to straighten things out, the beeping wouldn’t stop until the nurse came in and reset the machine. I settled back into a restless half-sleep, one that would be interrupted several more times throughout the night and the rest of my stay.
Ironic, isn’t it, that a hospital — where you go to recover from something bad enough that it put you there — is the worst place to get some good sleep?
From Work to Illness
“Drowning” is the best word I can use to describe the fall of 2024.
From a business standpoint, “hit and miss” is the kindest way I can describe the first nine months of the year. As I’ve mentioned, the freelance world has been unstable at best since the pandemic, and 2024 has been filled with ups and downs.
But starting in October and running through Thanksgiving, I was drowning in work, with more business in an eight-week period than in the previous four months combined. I photographed three multiple day conferences, shot more than 400 portraits of dancers in the “The Nutcracker” and a dance studio’s holiday showcase, and wrote three magazine stories. On top of that, I finished editing and laying out a 120-page book that my mother wrote for our family.
By the time our family gathered in Wintergreen for Thanksgiving, I was ready for a break. Unfortunately, in the midst of all the work, I had not managed to escape the effects of the fall allergy season. A sudden shift in temperature left me with low energy and what seemed like a bad head cold.
Unfortunately, at some point over the holiday, some airborne strain met up with the cold. Taking advantage of my tired and likely compromised immune system, the two took out a sublet and proliferated all over my right lung. All I wanted to do was crawl in the bed and sleep.
As long as I can recall, I’ve never been a good sleeper. It dates back to the early days of my father’s illness, which started during the holiday season more than 50 years ago. Lonely and not wanting to disturb my mother, he used to wake me in the middle of the night, establishing a pattern of nap/wake up/nap/wake up that I’ve rarely deviated from since.
For four days, from last Friday through Monday, I stayed mostly in bed, hoping rest would cure what ailed me. But it didn’t work, and by last Wednesday, I was in the hospital, dehydrated and feverish, with more than 90 percent of my right lung covered in pneumonia.
Like my grandfather, I was drowning from the inside out.
The Roommate
“I’m not getting them dog hairspray.”
It was close to midnight, and I had been moved from one semi-private room to another. In the first, I was with a young man with cerebral palsy who would go into surgery the next morning. His mother had left at the end of visiting hours, promising to return the next day. The man couldn’t speak, but he moaned in bursts that sounded disembodied. At one point, a Code Red was issued on the unit.
My nurse found me another room, where an affable gentleman with a deep Southern accent was talking to his wife on FaceTime. The two were looking for presents for one of his children and grandchildren on Amazon; by the time they finished, the purchases totaled almost $1,000.
Still fighting a fever, I tried to write down observations on my phone. One reads: “Time is a thief, the holder of all memories.” Another: A delay in the simple printing of a label takes moments to fix, but with patience on edge, it seems like hours. A third note: A bearded guy with tattoos and a man bun escorts an elderly woman on a 20-minute jog around the nurses’ station. “Don’t worry, I won’t push you,” he says, breaking into an 8-year-old’s giggle.
My roommate and I tell each other our stories in fits and starts. In the dark, he tells jokes even as he recounts a sobering story, one of traveling the world as a counterintelligence special agent. He doesn’t talk about politics but plays Fox News incessantly, and at levels where I can hear it, in the background.
I can deal with pneumonia. I can’t deal with an endless loop of white men talking about puberty blockers, illegal aliens, and mystery drones. Fortunately, by day three of my stay, the sound is muted.
Family Tradition
Sick as it may sound, being hospitalized during the holiday season feels I’m carrying on a family tradition. Every year, without fail from my teens until my 30s, I spent the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas visiting relatives in the hospital, waiting and wondering when the dreaded shoe was going to drop like an anvil on a member of my immediate family.
Over the second half of his life, my father often found himself in the hospital over the holidays. Looking back, I can only imagine how difficult that was on my parents, especially my mom. To her everlasting credit, she worked tirelessly to ensure my sister and I had a nice holiday season, even if that meant excavating me from my traditional sleeping spot under the tree late on Christmas Eve or putting our dog Frisky’s paw on a rubber stamp pad so the “reindeer” could sign Santa’s thank you note for the milk and cookies.
My parents did this while somehow putting food on the table, paying the bills on time, and getting us what we wanted (within reason), even if that meant recycling bows and wrapping paper from year to year and event to event. It also meant the largest Christmas present always came in "the bag," which was then folded and put away until the next year.
I didn't realize then how those small blessings, over time, could turn into large ones. One was my second set of “parents” — Fran and Bill, the childless neighbors from across the street who “adopted” us as theirs. Having them there always made the holidays a little easier.
While stuck in bed, many of those old memories played like a highlight reel in my fitful dreams. I saw my grandfather in the hospital days before he died — 43 years ago this week. I saw the family conversation after my Uncle Dave had a car radiator explode in his face just before Thanksgiving. (If there’s one thing I can safely say about my uncle, it’s that his failure to differentiate between a warm engine and a hot toddy made him the winner in the “Most Unique Reason to Spend the Holiday in a Hospital” category.)
And I remembered, again, a holiday conversation with my father that changed my life.
A Change in Life
Thirty years ago, during my parents’ Christmas visit to North Carolina, my dad and I went to see two movies on the same day. Movies were one way my father and I bonded, and it didn’t hurt that I managed to escape what was an increasingly untenable situation at home. My ex and I had been married for almost five years and things were tense. We had a child together, and I was lost.
On the way back to Reidsville from Greensboro, I asked my dad: “Why, given everything you’ve been through, are you and mom still together? How have you made it work?”
He paused for a long time, then said, “When I look at your mother, I see the same person I fell in love with. Of course, she has changed, physically, and so have I, but I still see the same person. And she sees me. She’s my best friend.”
For me, there was — and is — no simpler definition of love. More than I realized at the time, the conversation sealed it. Within a month, I left my marriage, hoping for the chance to have what my father had. Within two years, I had divorced, remarried, changed jobs, and Jill and I bought a house.
Two days after Christmas, in 1996, Jill gave birth to Katharine. On December 11, 1997, 11½ months later, she gave birth to Ben and Emma. With Nicholas’ birthday on the 9th, I had four children born in December. Christmas had moved from a season of endings to a season of beginnings.
As this Christmas approaches, I’m five days removed from the hospital and on the mend.
We’re not traveling to New York City this year, but there is some consolation. Ben and Emma will be here this weekend to help their dance studio celebrate its 25th anniversary and we’ll get together for brunch with Kate, Matthew, and Marley on Sunday.
My doctor says it will take several weeks to fully recover, and I have to say that not having an appetite during gorgefest season has been its own sort of blessing. As this crazy year — and especially this fall — nears the end, I’m happy to report that I’m still drowning, but it’s in the love and caring I’ve received from friends and family.
In the end, that’s the best gift of all.
Pneumonia is exhausting. Glad you are taking some much needed rest now.
Happy you're out and on the mend!!