If we’re lucky, we don’t do life alone. We have help. On his livestream sermon this week, Fr. Charlie Barton talked about having “companions on the way.” That feels like the right way to think about this past week.
Last Sunday, while in church, I got calls from my cousin and my sister, back to back. Something didn’t seem right, so I stepped outside. Our parents’ house was on fire. My mom made it out and so did her dogs. That was the report I heard before running to my car and driving to Oxford. I learned on the drive that my father was at work.
When I got there, firefighters from Oxford, Trappe, and Easton were actively fighting the fire, neighbors and friends were up and down the street, everyone seeing how they could help. The kitchen and living room were gone, smoke had been pouring out of the house; firefighters had to cut a hole in the roof to fight the fire which had spread into the attic. The cats did not survive the fire.
It was and is surreal. My parents bought that house in the late 1960s, it’s where my sister and I grew up, and all of our family memories have been, and everything my parents own. Displaced doesn’t begin to describe what they are going through.
And all this is the first part of companions on the way. From the firefighters, to the auxiliary, to concerned neighbors and friends, to people at Christ Church reaching out, showing up, bringing food, asking how to help; insurance companies helping with the process of next steps; real estate agents helping them to find a place to live for the the next year–it’s been companions on the way.
On Monday it was neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. For the past few months, Holly has been struggling with Chiari Malformation, where the back of the brain blocks the spinal column. There were maybe three good days in 60+, taking someone who has been in great health and hitting her with vertigo, dizziness, skull-splitting headaches, nausea, no energy, not being able to drive at times. Surgery was the clear answer.
Companions on the way, part two. From family, to work, to friends, to prayer teams, to surgeons, doctors, nurses and medical staff, people showed up, and are showing up, to help, to pray, to bring food, to do what they can. We brought Holly home on Wednesday after a successful surgery, and recovery is underway.
Part three. On Thursday, Ava and I made our way to A.I. DuPont Children’s Hospital in Wilmington. Her medicine has not been controlling her seizures this spring/summer and they wanted to keep her for an overnight EEG to monitor what is going on. As we checked in, we met a nurse practitioner who has worked in Easton and who has mutual friends. Talking to her and the neurologist on call this weekend, who is a specialist in pediatric epilepsy, someone who we had hoped to see but who has been scheduled too far out, they quickly asked if we could stay longer so they could cut back her medicine and work with some of her triggers so that they are more likely to be able capture some of her seizures to figure out the best course of action for her–whether surgery or different medications, or what.
So we find ourselves with a longer-than-anticipated stay at A.I. DuPont. We’ve watched the first Harry Potter movie and James Gunn’s new Suicide Squad (thank you HBO Max); Ava has beaten me multiple times at Connect 4 and I partially redeemed myself at Scrabble. She has a mummy headwrap on and the doctor said her EEGs are showing “sparks” (the conditions for/beginning of seizures) all over the place, much more than when we got here. So we wait, and oddly hope for seizures, knowing she is in good hands and that they can give the doctors here information that could hugely help her moving forward.
So that’s Sunday to Sunday this week. At every turn and at every corner, companions on the way have stepped up and made their presence known. Family, friends, and co-workers check in.
And I am carried by gratitude: for my parents both being okay after a devastating fire and for their finding a way forward to what is next; for Holly being able to have surgery to come back to herself and be healthy; for Ava being in great care and now on the radar screens of incredible doctors who have met her, are beginning to know her, and be personally involved in her case.
And for far too many companions on the way for me to name here. I feel frustrated for not being able to be in multiple places, this week especially, but can’t thank enough everyone who is there and helping.