a man and his jewel

This Christmas Eve will mark 67 years that my grandfather proposed to my grandmother. He told me the story today, and it's something I wanted to both share and remember:

As told by my grandfather; his fierce, blue eyes alight with joy:

" I was 21, and stationed in Edmonton, South Carolina. Our chief basically told us to get lost for the weekend. He didn't care what we did, or where we went, we were just told to be back on Sunday night, and to check in. I wanted to see your Grandmother. I took a bus from South Carolina. It was so crowded on the bus, I had to stand the whole way home. My brother picked me up at the bus station, and drove me home. I took the car down to Harriman, and parked it slanted across there from the municipal building. I was going to suprise your grandmother, so I parked a little way down the road. I had no intention of proposing to her, I just missed her, and thought about her often. As I headed down the road, I passed a little shop with jewelry in it. I had some time to kill, waiting on Grandmother to get off work, so I popped in, mostly just to get out of the cold. I started looking around and I saw a ring, I automatically thought of her, my sweet jewel, Irene. I asked the shopkeeper how much that ring was. He told me 50 dollars, which was a lot of money back then, you know. I looked in my wallet and found that I had exactly that amount. I bought the ring, and headed down to the five and dime, where grandmother worked. I watched her through the window, cleaning and straightening up. So sweet and happy, my jewel. When she got off work, I suprised her- she was both happy and shocked to see me! When we got in the car, I took her hand and slipped that ring on. The next day, my dad and my brother drove me back to South Carolina. They had to pool their gas stamps to get me there and get back home, but we all made it. I was late getting back, but I slipped in and went straight to bed. No one ever said anything to me!"

My heart is melting. This may be the sweetest story I've ever heard, and the fact that it happend to two people I love so dearly, is simply magical. I love you both...

Love,
Heather

hard to breathe

I share a birthday with one of the most important men in my life, my grandfather- or Gia to me. I started calling him that as a little girl, and it never really stopped. So he's my Gia. Last week he was put in the hospital with fluid on his heart and lungs. I totally freaked out. I called Mark at work on the emergency line and pretty much scared the crap out of him I was crying so hard. He and I both left work early to run up to the hospital and check the situation out for ourselves.

Gia was already in a room when we got to the hospital and seeing him lying there, wheezing, I can't tell you what that did to me. It shook me. So the first thing I did was to find out what was going on with his body. He was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure several years ago so, (but has managed it well with diet and exercise) that on top of this fluid on his heart and lungs was pretty scary for me. They ruled out pneumonia pretty quickly. The following day they ruled out a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs) -which was a relief, because that scared the crap out of me. They ultimately decided he has some form of cardiac asthma, brought on my the heart failure. After several breathing treatments, steroids and inflammatory drugs, he was feeling much better, but at some point in his stay at the hospital he had developed pneumonia. GREAT! They were able to catch and treat it quickly though and he was able to come home on Sunday.

We are so glad to have him back at home now. We love you Gia.

Late Night Phone Calls

Have you ever gotten a phone call late at night, and you just knew the news wasn't going to be good? That's what happened to me tonight.

After a lovely dinner of Duck rolls at Beth's, Mark and I came home to settle in for the night. I got my phone out to check and see if Holly had called me, as she had been en route to Georgia today, to say that she had made it safely there. I did have a missed call, but it wasn't from her.
My grandfather had called, and he left me a voice mail. He never calls me. The call was from his cell phone. Even more strange. My heart stopped for a moment. I get the nerve to check the voicemail. It went something like this:

"Your mother cleaned the floors and did the wash today. She was busy all day long. She worked very hard. She ate a lot of cake. I took a nap and when I woke up she was in the kitchen floor. She said she was dizzy. I made her use grandmothers' walker to get to the bedroom. She also said she took her nighttime medicine. Just thought you should know. Bye."

Dear God. Please let me be dreaming. What kind of message is that? I call my grandfather's cell phone back. (An oddity in itself.) He answered and told me the same story again. I asked where my mom was now and he said "She's sleeping."
I asked him if he thought I should come up and he said, "No, I think I was just a little excited when I left the message. I think she will be fine, but you can come sleep on the sofa if you want to."

What to do? I told him to go check on her again while I discussed meds with Mark. Mark thinks it's just the "nighttime medicine" doing it's job. His actual words were, I believe she's having an Ambien Trip. He also said that sleep walking and dizziness are side effects of Ambien. Poor mama. Cant sleep with the meds, can't sleep without them. anyway, I called him back again and he said she was fine and still sleeping. Hopefully that is all there will be to this story.

Except for the fact that I am still worried and now I can't sleep.