Satchel Paige is credited with the comment, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, but sometimes I just sits.”

That describes what my days were like a week ago. I was just sitting.

Here is the explanation I promised last week.

I think the holidays caught up with me.  Everyone knows that Christmas is my favorite holiday.  I love the music, the lights, the colors, the snow on the ground (sometimes iffy), the Christmas story, nativities, Christmas cards and even the shopping. I love the family coming for the holidays and the cooking and the good food.

Each year the drill at our house is this; the family comes for Christmas Eve and Christmas day, we eat and then exchange gifts. The women cook and the men do the dishes. Then we sit around and enjoy each other’s company.

Many of our family members don’t get home often so we try to catch up with everyone.

Some of them stay at our house. Others are scattered around the area, but all come home for meals.  So needless to say there is a lot of good food prepared in our kitchen. Dick is always in charge of breakfast as a short order cook.  I am in charge of dinners. Lunch is always leftovers.

The day after Christmas we celebrate our daughter’s and granddaughter’s birthdays both were born on the 26th. For the past 30 years, we take the tree down after the birthday celebration and pack it away.  The rest of the decorations are left for our son to take down and pack away because we leave for Florida for the winter two days after Christmas. We get there in time for New Year’s Eve and we stay for four months.

This is our holiday routine.  But not this year. The unpredictable happened.

Since our first child was born, we have not been strangers to hospitals and doctor’s waiting rooms.  Both of our daughters have health issues that have taken us from the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. But our two sons have always been healthy — until this summer.

Our oldest son lives with us and helps with taking care of our house, lawn and pool.  He has become our old age caretaker. He does all of the odd jobs that need taken care of in a nearly 60-year-old house. But this summer was different.  He was not feeling well., not really sick, but not his usual self.  Like all men he refused to see a doctor, until the end of October when a headache wouldn’t go away. He finally consented to a trip to the emergency room.  After tests they diagnosed him with a mass in his head.

The next day a neurosurgeon scheduled brain surgery. After a biopsy it was confirmed that he had a lymphoma in his brain that has required chemo and many trips to waiting rooms.

Now we are a family like many others who are dealing with the unknown. One or the other of our daughters have been here for their brother nearly every day, as we all accompany him to his many medical appointments and spend time in waiting rooms.

After the shock of all of this and with the holidays in the mix we are finally working at getting back to a new normal routine and taking each day as it comes.

We are here for the winter. Frankly I never missed the cold winter months, but everyone tells me we are lucky that it has not been  like last winter.

Thank you for the prayers and well wishes. But now I am asking for understanding when my writing may not make much sense. I think I am ready to provide readers with Edwardsburg history once again.

Just so you know, I have been sitting and thinking.

 

Jo-Ann Boepple works at the Edwardsburg Area History Museum