I Hate Roller Coasters

So we made it through Christmas and New Years. Several days before Christmas I told Christine's dad that nothing about Christmas would be the same. Little did I know how true that would be. We knew it was going to be hard without Christine. She loved everything about Christmas especially being with family.
I found these beautiful pewter angels ornaments that were engraved with "Those we have held in our arms for a little while, we hold in our hearts forever." I couldn't have said it better myself. We gave each family an angel on Christmas Eve. It was very emotional. We all missed her so much.
Christmas morning we went to church. This was our first time in this church since Christine's funeral. I did pretty well till about two thirds through the service and then the tears began to flow which made the rest of my family tear up.
We sat down to Christmas dinner about one o'clock. Within minutes, my dad was coughing like I had never seen before. My brothers rushed him to the emergency room where they stablized him and then transferred him to a hospital in the city. My sister and I drove into the city to meet up with him at the emergency room. He wasn't doing very well and we thought we were going to lose him. The doctors suspected that during his coughing he had asperated food into his lungs. He kept saying that he felt like something was stuck. Bless his heart, he managed to cough it out to the surprise of all the doctors and us as well. My dad recently turned 97 and to have the strength to do that at his age was nothing short of miracle. Unfortunately, he has paid a big price for this incident. It has left him very weak. He has been in the hospital again since but is at home now. For the first time in his life, he can no longer take care of himself. We all thought that he would live to see 100 but now we aren't so sure. His mother lived to be 102!
A few days after we had returned home, our two year old granddaughter swollowed a quarter. Luckily it stuck in her throat in such a way that she was able to breath. They took her to the emergency room and then was admitted to the hospital. Her parents took turns holding her through the night so that she wouldn't be able to move around much. In the morning the X-ray showed that the quarter had bearly moved over night so they put off surgery for several more hours. She had to be put under for the procedure and they wanted to wait as long as possible since she had eaten just before she swollowed the quarter. The procedure went well and she had no after affects at all. In fact, she tried to eat a button the next day. She thought it was candy. (We had to take her dad to the emergency room twice when he was her age for stuff he had put in his mouth! Sorry, Jason I just couldn't resist sharing that.)
So it feels like we have been on a roller coaster. And just to top things off, we have had snow, snow and more snow and as a matter of fact, it is snowing lightly as I write this. Normally I like the snow but I hate when you can't see into the intersection because of the snow banks and we do have snow banks!
Well that was our first Christmas since Christine died. Christine and I would always try to find a silver lining in things. Lots of times it was pretty hard but then we would generally manage to come up with something pretty silly. I have to say the silver lining is that both my dad and granddaughter survived.
Happy New Year......

Jan
Christine's Mom