I
remember my niece had some kind of surgery and had worn a pink cast in the
hospital bed. Her dad, who is a
professional photographer who always takes huge amounts of pictures, did not
document any of Anna’s time at the hospital.
It was a sad event not to dwell on and he didn’t want any of the family
to have that painful memory. That doesn’t
change what happened.
My
sister and I have a great four-year-old nephew has cancer. His parents (or other family members) have
taken lots of pictures. It’s a sad event
– one the family just assume forget and yet it’s a milestone that may need to
be documented so one day the family will have proof about facing a challenge
and learning things that perhaps they would rather learn another way. It’s not a pleasant milestone – but there
will be growth and learning experiences to share.
Anna
has another cousin on her dad’s side who has battled and may continue battling
cancer. I remember Bill sharing a
picture of the family standing with their then four-year-old son who had
cancer. They thought it could possibly be
the last family picture with him in it. His
mom just recently dropped him off at college.
He’s a survivor and I’m betting my nephew will be also with many years
ahead.
Yesterday
one of Jenna’s former instructors showed a slide of an old car seat from the
sixties. After the students made their
guesses as to what it was, she told them about an incident that happened to her
family involving the car, a similar car seat and an overly cautious father
(ahead of his time for car safety).
He’d
been driving the family car. They were
on vacation and had pulled off the highway to get something to eat. Because it was summer and cars didn’t have
such features as A/C’s (not to mention GPS units or even seat belts in all cars
as it was optional back then) the windows had been rolled down and apparently a
grasshopper had invited itself to roost on their dashboard.
The
mother and father changed places so that he could lie down in back. He had strapped himself in with two seat
belts. The instructor who told the story
had been five at the time and rode in front.
In between her and her mother was her one-year-old sister sedated in the
old-time car seat which did not come with a belt. However, her father (who had purposely
purchased a car that not only offered front seat belts but back seat belts as
well) had removed a seat belt from a junk yard car and bolted them into his own
so that a strap could be placed over the one-year-old in the car seat.
The
mother, who was driving, decided to get rid of the grasshopper. Unfortunately
she made the choice while she was driving.
She somehow managed to overturn the car so that it rolled two and a half
times away from the road. The car landed
upside down.
The
dad somehow managed to free himself and crawl through the window, rescuing the
instructor first and then her sister.
Everybody was fine. The mom had
received a few bruises and broken skin on her left hand as she had grabbed the
bar that separated the winged vent from the rest of the driver’s window. Other than that, there weren’t any injuries
to any of the passengers – only the wrecked car that had to be towed.
The
teacher telling the story said that when the police arrived, the family was
asked, “Where are the victims?”
What a great thing to survive! Well, the results being great but not so much the event itself.
After
telling the story, she assigned the students to each write a time line
including at least ten things of significance that happened during their
lives. She said some memories will be
sad. Some will be happy. Some will be first-hand events that are
remembered first-handedly and some will be the memories of other family members
that have told about what took place – like the birth of the individual. Everybody was born and so had to come up with
nine more things. I found it to be quite
an interesting assignment.
Later
I had asked Jenna if she had ever had that assignment. She said she had not.
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