2015 was, on the whole, a shit year
that almost turned shittier in its last week.
Christmas was calm and... enjoyable, but that enjoyment came with mixed feelings. It was the first Christmas Eve without my grandmother (Mom'm mom). She was missing, period. (When we told Felix that we'd be celebrating Christmas Eve at our house, "all of us together", he immediately said "not all of us") And whenever someone said or I thought that it was a lovely evening, there was an unsaid "Grandma Erika would have enjoyed it" swinging along. The kids got far too many presents and couldn't even unwrap them all that evening.
Part of what made this Christmas so nice and calm was also that there were only two days of feasting, rather than the usual three-with-everybody-fit-to-burst-and-unable-to-appreciate-more-goodness marathon we've been running in the past years. Which also comes with mixed feelings, because the reason for the lack of a third day of feasting is that my grandfather (Dad's dad) appears to be increasingly in the grips of dementia. He is now living in an old people's home and it was agreed that it would be too confusing for him to drive him out to my Uncle's where we've been having out Feast of Stephen/Boxing Day (which is also a federal holiday in Germany - we get two and a half days off for Christmas) feast in the past decade. So his children (my dad and his two brothers) and their wives went to visit him at his new home, but none of the grandchildren. They weren't certain that the great-grandchildren (my sons) wouldn't be bored to death and/or kick up too much trouble so we didn't go, either. As it happened, grandpa asked specifically how Felix and "the little one" were doing so maybe we should have gone. So there's feelings of guilt about that, too.
That's not the shitty part, though. The shitty part is how on Sunday, Julian ("the little one") climbed onto a chair to reach for a box of cookies. It all went so fast that I didn't even see it happening properly, but he seems to have leaned too far to the side and fell off the chair (standing up), right onto his back and head. Wam.
I rushed over to pick him up and cuddle him close. He started crying. When children cry, they will sometimes take a looong breath before continuing to sob, but this time the looooong breath wasn't followed by a loud wail (as "normal"), just a strange little whimper. NO NO NOT GOOD. So I let him sink into my arms to take a look at his eyes and the worst thing happened, the sort of thing you never, never want to experience and I definitely never, ever want to see again:
His eyes rolled up, and his head lolled back, and his entire little body went limp.
In retrospect, the image that comes to mind is that of a candle being snuffed out. When it happened, I had no such images in my mind; I just cried "JULIAN! OH MY GOD!" which at least had the effect of his eyes fluttering back open. But his breathing was still very flat and laboured, and there was no tension whatsoever in his limbs. So I held him close and upright with his head resting on my shoulder and his limp little limbs trailing down my arm and called Jörg and told him that we needed to go to the hospital. Worst moments ever. Jörg used his flashlight to check Julian's pupillary reflexes, which were normal - some small consolation - but it was still horrible.
Well, as we were getting into the car, the tension returned into Julian's limbs and he audibly said "Ma? Mama!", and when I put him into his seat he was flailing his legs in excitement (Julian loves riding the car, or in fact anything that's got to do with cars or just wheels) and asking for "Papa?" who was shutting the garage door. That was some serious relief. By the time we reached the hospital, he had regained full control over his body. When we registered with Pediatric A&E, he was extremely cuddly and more passive than usual, but we weren't even certain whether that was still because of the accident or because of the strange place and strange people. On the whole, he was doing so well that I was already feeling slightly guilty about taking away time and attention from people with seriously ill kids (TM). Julian did well on all the check-ups they did. But the hospital folks agreed that a fall on the head shouldn't be taken lightly. In spite of not throwing up, Julian was very likely concussed and there was a risk of further brain injury. Not enough risk to justify an immediate CAT scan, but enough that they wanted to keep him under close watch for a couple of days.
So we spent the last couple of days in hospital. Fortunately, I was allowed to stay with Julian the whole time. Also fortunately, Felix took it reasonably well and behaved himself very well with just Jörg and Jörg's mom around. (When I was in hospital after Julian's birth, Jörg's mom and Jörg were completely exhausted from dealing with the Flixster.) Julian showed no further signs of injury; in fact, the evening after his accident (i.e., a few hours later), it was already impossible to keep him from climbing around on hospital chairs and running along the corridors and bossing me around in the hospital playroom ("Mama, bau!", "Mom, build!"). As if to reassure us that no lasting harm was done to his brain, he has since acquired new words ("das?" ["that?", used as a question, as in "What's that?") and Mist! ["crap!"]) and continues to babble merrily. So we got lucky.
But it was still a horrid feeling. And on a somewhat less dramatic scale, it was another case of loosing precious days and not getting anything that I'd planned done. I know it's ridiculous to think that everything will magically be better just because of a number on the calendar, but man, I'm so ready for 2015 to be over.
Christmas was calm and... enjoyable, but that enjoyment came with mixed feelings. It was the first Christmas Eve without my grandmother (Mom'm mom). She was missing, period. (When we told Felix that we'd be celebrating Christmas Eve at our house, "all of us together", he immediately said "not all of us") And whenever someone said or I thought that it was a lovely evening, there was an unsaid "Grandma Erika would have enjoyed it" swinging along. The kids got far too many presents and couldn't even unwrap them all that evening.
Part of what made this Christmas so nice and calm was also that there were only two days of feasting, rather than the usual three-with-everybody-fit-to-burst-and-unable-to-appreciate-more-goodness marathon we've been running in the past years. Which also comes with mixed feelings, because the reason for the lack of a third day of feasting is that my grandfather (Dad's dad) appears to be increasingly in the grips of dementia. He is now living in an old people's home and it was agreed that it would be too confusing for him to drive him out to my Uncle's where we've been having out Feast of Stephen/Boxing Day (which is also a federal holiday in Germany - we get two and a half days off for Christmas) feast in the past decade. So his children (my dad and his two brothers) and their wives went to visit him at his new home, but none of the grandchildren. They weren't certain that the great-grandchildren (my sons) wouldn't be bored to death and/or kick up too much trouble so we didn't go, either. As it happened, grandpa asked specifically how Felix and "the little one" were doing so maybe we should have gone. So there's feelings of guilt about that, too.
That's not the shitty part, though. The shitty part is how on Sunday, Julian ("the little one") climbed onto a chair to reach for a box of cookies. It all went so fast that I didn't even see it happening properly, but he seems to have leaned too far to the side and fell off the chair (standing up), right onto his back and head. Wam.
I rushed over to pick him up and cuddle him close. He started crying. When children cry, they will sometimes take a looong breath before continuing to sob, but this time the looooong breath wasn't followed by a loud wail (as "normal"), just a strange little whimper. NO NO NOT GOOD. So I let him sink into my arms to take a look at his eyes and the worst thing happened, the sort of thing you never, never want to experience and I definitely never, ever want to see again:
His eyes rolled up, and his head lolled back, and his entire little body went limp.
In retrospect, the image that comes to mind is that of a candle being snuffed out. When it happened, I had no such images in my mind; I just cried "JULIAN! OH MY GOD!" which at least had the effect of his eyes fluttering back open. But his breathing was still very flat and laboured, and there was no tension whatsoever in his limbs. So I held him close and upright with his head resting on my shoulder and his limp little limbs trailing down my arm and called Jörg and told him that we needed to go to the hospital. Worst moments ever. Jörg used his flashlight to check Julian's pupillary reflexes, which were normal - some small consolation - but it was still horrible.
Well, as we were getting into the car, the tension returned into Julian's limbs and he audibly said "Ma? Mama!", and when I put him into his seat he was flailing his legs in excitement (Julian loves riding the car, or in fact anything that's got to do with cars or just wheels) and asking for "Papa?" who was shutting the garage door. That was some serious relief. By the time we reached the hospital, he had regained full control over his body. When we registered with Pediatric A&E, he was extremely cuddly and more passive than usual, but we weren't even certain whether that was still because of the accident or because of the strange place and strange people. On the whole, he was doing so well that I was already feeling slightly guilty about taking away time and attention from people with seriously ill kids (TM). Julian did well on all the check-ups they did. But the hospital folks agreed that a fall on the head shouldn't be taken lightly. In spite of not throwing up, Julian was very likely concussed and there was a risk of further brain injury. Not enough risk to justify an immediate CAT scan, but enough that they wanted to keep him under close watch for a couple of days.
So we spent the last couple of days in hospital. Fortunately, I was allowed to stay with Julian the whole time. Also fortunately, Felix took it reasonably well and behaved himself very well with just Jörg and Jörg's mom around. (When I was in hospital after Julian's birth, Jörg's mom and Jörg were completely exhausted from dealing with the Flixster.) Julian showed no further signs of injury; in fact, the evening after his accident (i.e., a few hours later), it was already impossible to keep him from climbing around on hospital chairs and running along the corridors and bossing me around in the hospital playroom ("Mama, bau!", "Mom, build!"). As if to reassure us that no lasting harm was done to his brain, he has since acquired new words ("das?" ["that?", used as a question, as in "What's that?") and Mist! ["crap!"]) and continues to babble merrily. So we got lucky.
But it was still a horrid feeling. And on a somewhat less dramatic scale, it was another case of loosing precious days and not getting anything that I'd planned done. I know it's ridiculous to think that everything will magically be better just because of a number on the calendar, but man, I'm so ready for 2015 to be over.