Priest’s Confessions: ‘The best Christmas ever … ’ | Columnists | Summerville Journal Scene

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Priest’s Confessions: ‘The best Christmas ever … ’

Published Tuesday, January 06, 2009 5:21 PM

By Ellen Priest
Summerville Journal Scene ®

What makes children so resilient?

I am truly amazed at their ability to accept things as they are and move beyond it.

They don’t dwell in the moment. They don’t feel sorry for themselves. It is what it is.

When my son was young, he suffered with allergies so bad that we spent every night dealing with it.

I felt like a zombie most days going to work with only one hour’s sleep.

I was blessed with a babysitter who allowed him to come in his nightie the next day and catch up on his missed sleep from the night before.

Unfortunately, my boss wouldn’t allow me the same privilege. I feel like I sleep walked through those five years.

When I heard him cough on the baby monitor, I knew I had literally seconds to get to his room or I’d be changing the sheets.

One night in my half awake state, I ran head first into a closed door and ended up on the floor rubbing my head.

I changed the sheets that night.

Many nights, my husband would wake up and sleepily say, “Oh, did Greg get sick?”

He’s lucky I didn’t have a frying pan in the bedroom to hit him with since that was not the first time that night I’d been up but the eighth, and he’d slept through the first seven.

My son suffered through bronchitis, the croup, a rotavirus that put him in the hospital, and tubes in his ears by the time he was seven months old.

My husband once said to me that he could not believe that no matter how sick Greg was, he was always in a good mood and he never complained. He just kept going.

Later years brought repeat illnesses, as well as pneumonia, and more sleepless nights.

Somehow, as parents, we make it through these nights.

What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger, right?

These days were brought back to me recently when a co-worker’s six-year old son was hospitalized right before Christmas.

“Peanut” suffers with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and yet, he is the sweetest, most precocious, smartest kid you will ever meet.

He serves as a local spokesman for the disease. He appears on TV and radio frequently, talking about CF fundraisers and trying to make people more aware of the disease.

During his recent hospitalization, despite being in the hospital for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, he was his usual resilient self.

This is the email I received from his dad, Joey, that day:

“Caroline packed up all of Christmas and brought it to MUSC.

”We opened all the gifts. There was stuff everywhere. Peanut kicked back in his bed with one of his new books and said, ‘Daddy, this is the best Christmas ever.’

”He was ecstatic. We took him off oxygen about 7 a.m. and his percentage never dropped. So about 11 a.m. the doc came in because I asked if we could leave. Peanut made his best puppy dog face until the doctor said we could leave.

"‘Hooray! Happy birthday Jesus!’ Peanut said. "‘See Daddy, I told you this was the best Christmas ever."”

Could anyone have said it better than that?

Merry Christmas, Peanut.

May all your Christmases be spent at home, where you belong.

And may we find a cure for CF soon.

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