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January 09, 2008
Holiday Memories 2007
Beka - I have to admit that this was the first year that I did not work either the Christmas or New Year's holidays. For the past 9 years I have worked then, but this year my mother put her foot down and wanted all three of her kids at home for the holidays . Getting back home was a hardship -- airport delays, long lines, and the fact that an antitheft detector turned off my DBS device, which I learned how to reset this year!
Despite sleeping in, being “cookied-out” by my mother, shoveling massive amounts of snow, and building an ice rink in the backyard for ice-skating, I did miss my patients and wondered how they were doing in their hospital beds. Were their families bringing in chocolates or desserts for the staff? How was the unit decorated, if at all this year? I remember times when stringing up holiday lights turned into a 2 am night-shift task, depending on where you worked!
Friends came a knocking to our house each day, loaded with baskets of fruit, nuts, Swiss chocolate, and bottles of wine. The house had been decorated in a Swedish style, as my mother had spent a portion of her youth living in Sweden. Christmas in Sweden is a blend of domestic and foreign customs that have been re-interpreted, refined, and commercialized on their way from agrarian society to the modern age. Today, most Swedes celebrate Christmas in roughly the same way, and many of the local customs and specialties have disappeared, although each family claims to celebrate it in true fashion in their own particular way. This is especially true when it comes to displaying the national flag.
The food you eat at Christmas may still depend on where you live in the country, or where you came from originally. But here, too, homogenization has set in, due in no small part to the uniform offerings of the department stores and the ready availability of convenience foods. Few have time to salt their own hams or stuff their own pork sausages nowadays. My mother had kept to tradition by baking 13 different types of cookies regardless.
Ingmar Bergman’s Oscar-winning film “Fanny and Alexander,” although set in the late 19th century, nevertheless reflects Swedish Christmas celebrations today: a bright and lively occasion, full of excess, good food, and happiness, but also a time during which family secrets tend to surface. Don’t they always surface during the holidays?
Swedes, like my mother, expect a great deal from their Christmases. There should be snow on the ground, blue skies and sunshine, everyone must be in good health, the ham must be succulent and tasty, and the gifts must be numerous. We had snow and sun along with a bit of abundance!
Share your most memorable holiday experiences at home or with patients…
January 9, 2008 in Beka | Permalink
Comments
It was Christmas 1996. I was working my scheduled holiday and we had a patient on the unit that had been critically injured in a road construction accident when a car, speeding through the construction zone hit him at 60 mph and sent him flying 350 feet.
Jerry was in a coma for three months and was transferred to our rehabilitation unit for physical therapy while the bones in his crushed right leg knitted back together.
Jerry never wanted to be a bother to the nurses and tried to keep us from injuring our backs while trying to reposition him in bed. He ended up getting strained and sore muscles in his upper back.
He was a very friendly and jovial man. He would regale us with stories about his work on the contruction crew. He was always quick with a smile and was rarely on his call light for anything.
As the holidays approached, Jerry became more subdued. He desperately wanted to be home with his family but because of the frame on his right leg, going home for a visit was out of the question.
He always went to Midnight Mass, even though he was not raised Catholic, a habit he developed when he was still married.
I am also a professional musician so on Christmas Eve, I brought my portable keyboard with the intention of playing and singing Christmas carols for Jerry.
At the end of my shift, I went down to Jerry's room and set up my keyboard and played carols softly on the pipe organ setting. Once the night nurse was through with her rounds, she came in and sang some carols, too.
Jerry was so depressed over not being home for Christmas, I thought we could do something nice for him to ease his disappointment. It was a simple gesture of kindness.
The next morning, on Christmas Day, Jerry's mom came to the hospital and she searched the unit until she found me. Tears welled up in her eyes as she expressed her gratitude.
She told me, "You have no idea how much that meant to Jerry. He always goes to Midnight Mass. I can't thank you enough for your kind and thoughtful gesture."
I always remembered that when I had patients who were far from home and familiar things. The smallest of gestures can make a big difference in a patient's life.
Posted by: Anna Lucas | Jan 17, 2008 7:59:09 AM
This Christmas I received a gift of inestimable value. Our family had celebrated our Christmas earlier on Dec. 23 and 24th. Christmas day was to be a quiet, go to church, come home and get comfy kind of day. My mother who is 83 and has lived with us for a year had gone to Mass earlier and had decided that a nap was in her plans. I spent some quiet time reading. The phone rang and the number showed an unfamiliar, out of state number. I paused and almost didn't answer but something told me it was a call on Christmas and I needed to answer. An unfamiliar voice asked to speak to my mother. I explained that she was napping, but again I "knew" I needed to awaken her to take the call.
When my mother took the phone and started to listen to the callers message, her face creased in pain and her voice shook when she asked a question. I motioned to her to let me speak when she was finished. The caller identified herself as the daughter of one of my mother's oldest and dearest friends. She had taken her mother to the hospital several days earlier and now she was not expecting to be able to bring her home. Her mother had asked her to call her dear friends, Betty (my Mother) and Ruth who had been friends since second grade. I asked if I could bring my Mother to the hospital in the next hour. She sounded surprised and pleased. I helped my Mother dress and we said prayers for her friend Nora as we traveled to the hospital.
When we arrived her daughter greeted us and I rolled my Mother's wheelchair up to the side of the bed. Nora smiled and held out her hand. My mother gathered her hand in hers and just smiled at her friend. I backed away to introduce myself to Nora's son and daughter and we looked at the two of them and smiled and cried. I asked if she had been able to reach Ruth and she said no. I knew Ruth's husband had been in Hospice care for a while and suggested she call Ruth's son. Again I "knew". Thirty minutes later the sight of Ruth's white head and grave face came around the corner. She expressed her thanks and headed for the other side of Nora's bed. I lowered the side rails and let the 3 friends of 76 years and countless shared memories hold hands and reminisce. Nora's daughter and I looked at the white heads and shared tears and thanks that we were allowed to be instrumental in this reunion. The ladies visited for an hour. When we left my Mother kissed her friend and told her to take care.
The next day I received a call from Nora's daughter to tell me that her mother died at 4am with her son and daughter at her bedside.
We were given a brief pause in time to make a difference in her Mother's last hours and we are forever grateful. Christmas Day was a gift to all of us!
Posted by: Mary Kay Montgomery | Jan 16, 2008 5:16:53 PM
I have a few memories about Christmas that will always be special to me. I have been a nurse for 30+ years and most of those years I have worked in Pediatrics. The first year I was out of school I work 3-11 on a Pediatric unit. I was young and newly married. My husband wanted to send some time with me on Christmas Eve so we got the OK from my unit supervisor tho have Santa Claus come to the unit. We did have a lot of patients that evening which was unusual because the doctors tried to dismiss as many of the patients as they could. My uncle had always been the town Santa Claus in the little town I was raised in so he had an extra Santa suit my husband could borrow. We talked to all of the patients parents to bring some of the kids presents in for Santa to give them as he went room to room. We gathered the gifts and went with him room to room with their parents and gave them their gifts. On the next to the last room he went into a teen-agers room and gave him his gift. He of course was the cool teenager that didn't believe in Santa but he did want his gift. Santa(my husband) tried very hard to convince him that he was the real Santa with little success but the boy still enjoyed his gift. As Santa was leaving the room his pants that were too big started to fall down. The teen-ager saw him pull the pants up that had fallen to his knees and showed the pillow that was his stomach. That really made the gift giving a funny adventure. We tried to keep it quit so the 2 little children would not know what had happened. He made it around to the other rooms.We all had a good laugh and the kids that were a little older heard about how Santa had lost his pants in a room. They didn't know about the pillow showing. It was a fun evening in the hospital when usually the parents aren't real happy to be spending the holiday in the hospital.
Posted by: Kay Bockstadter | Jan 16, 2008 9:34:39 AM
