Toby and I had a little heart-to-heart tonight. And by “heart-to-heart” I mean that I
told him the story of the time he was sick and almost died. It wasn’t something I ever planned out,
how I was going to tell him; I just assumed it would just somehow become a part
of the story of his life. Although
suddenly now he’s 6 and we have yet to mention it to him for no other reason
than the fact that I absolutely hate the feeling it gives me to think back on
those few weeks of his life.
But that’s what Grandmas are for. One day, after spending the weekend exploring Toronto with Toby,
I got an offhanded warning from my mother. Along with the usual information about bed times, meal
consumption, behaviour and a run down of all 100 activities they had managed to fit
into the 24 hours visit, she added an extra, “Oh and he MAY mention something
about Sick kids. We drove past it
and I kind of mentioned something about him being sick.”
That was the last I heard of it for a few months. Until yesterday, when I was driving him
to school and out of the blue he launched into, “So did YOU know that Grandma
Lynda CRIED when she was in her 60s!?!??!” (He is under the assumption that the older you get the less
likely you are to cry…) I forgot
to heed my mother’s warning and innocently walked right into it, “NO, I didn’t
know that, Toby, why did she cry?”
“Because I almost DIED.”
And there it was.
“Oh, right. Yes, THAT.”
“Well…??” he asked as I turned the corner to his school.
There is no correct way to answer this. I had less than 15 seconds to clarify WHAT exactly he was asking, explore what exactly he wanted and needed to know, and do so without vomiting on my steering wheel. I delivered a heartfelt promise to come back to this very topic after school and sent him on his day with reassurances and a few extra hugs and kisses.
I had exactly 6 hours to prepare.
Luckily, Mr. Inquisitive of the Unforgiving Memory was
somehow diverted until bedtime when I got some time just the two of us. I went down into the basement and got
out the 2 books my wonderful friend, Gwen, had prepared for just this
moment. There was a beautiful leather-bound
scrapbook of all of our photos, paraphernalia and print outs of my blog posts
from his weeks at Sick kids and a printed kid friendly book version.
We read both.
Toby was very quiet throughout the whole thing. Every time we flipped to a photo he
asked me to move so that he could get a good look at it under the light of his bedside table. Although there was some duplication
between the two books he took every photo very seriously. His questions included ones about why
he wasn’t wearing any clothes and why he was crying and most frequently why
there were so many lines and tubes around him. I was glad to have the medical
background to explain things to him.
He was PARTICULARLY horrified to see that they had shaved his head in
order to put an IV in it. WHY,
exactly? I don’t know…I told him
honestly…they just did.
At the end of bedtime I was exhausted. When I asked Toby if he wanted me to
sing him his song he asked instead if he could ask me some questions.
“Of COURSE!” I said, thinking about how much I had just unloaded onto him.
His questions shocked me, “What was the most fun part about
being there?”
No one had EVER asked me that. There WAS nothing fun about it. Although I did tell him that it was kind of fun to see him
playing with his balloons? And
leaving was DEFINITELY fun.
In return I asked him what he though might be the scariest
or saddest part of the story. He
thought about this for a bit,
“I think the saddest part of that story was when I had to leave.”
WHAT???
“You know…when we had to leave Sick Kids and go back
home. It seemed like such a nice
place and we had people visiting and you talked about how loved and supported
we were. Must have been sad to
have to leave all that and come home.”
Oh, my dear, Toby.
Although I’m glad he wasn’t permanently traumatized by his experience, I
don’t know that I was ready for such an offhanded, misunderstanding of it
all. But as I digested this later
on that night I grew to realize that we both took the same thing out of
it. Though it is far in our past,
it is embedded in everything we do.
Every experience we have is laced with the knowledge that life is
precious and precarious. Every
triumph Toby has relieves our secret fears that the myriad of drugs and
sedatives his 10-month-old brain was subjected to has caused some delay or
damage. And every now and then I
think about the amazing meals that were cooked and brought to us; the medical
care my very best friends gave; the groceries and bottle of wine that waited
for us when we got home; the thousands of loving messages we received on our
website; the incredible love and support from family and friends that got us
all through. Toby was right. Although it was a horrible thing to
have lived through, the gift it gave us – knowing we are loved and supported by so
many- is inexplicable. But he missed
a key point: we brought it all home with us.
His last remark of the evening, though, brought me back to
the now.
“Who IS Shania Twain, ANYWAYS…can we listen to her
sometime?”
(I haven’t been able to listen to Shania since.)
“Sure, Toby.”
I guess it’s time to bring her back out again.
Man, I feel like a woman.
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