A Few Technicalities

Tonight Alexa selected the book Marshall Visits the Hospital as her bedtime story.  I received an author-signed copy of the book as a baby shower gift, and it's a very sweet book intended to help ease children's apprehension about hospitals and what they may experience there.  In the four years we have owned this book, I think we must have read it a hundred times, but tonight was a very different recitation of this book.  For the first time, Alexa began to question some of the book's content, as there are some very obvious differences between her experiences of a hospital through Grant versus an upbeat introduction of most children's hospital experiences.  Poor Alexa has no idea the magnitude of what she's experienced!

As usual, Alexa curled up next to me as I read the book, but she quickly interrupted me when I read a sentence pertaining to "the doctors and nurses will have you back home in no time."  Alexa halted the reading, "Wait!  That's not true, Mommy.  Grant didn't get to come back home after the hospital, because he was very sick and died."  Great...I had to continue reading this book with myself on the verge of tears.  After I concurred with Alexa's statement, I moved onto the next page, but it didn't take long before she interrupted again.  This time the technicality pertained to "a special chair for Mommy to sleep in your hospital room" that Marshall cited.  "Mommy, you did not have a chair at Granty's hospital.  You had a bench with a pillow and a blanket, but one time there was also a big bed in Granty's room (our final hospital stay)."  Once again, she was correct, and her ability to remember the details of the last year continues to amaze me.  I truly wish her experience with hospitals was as upbeat and cheery as described in Marshall Visits the Hospital, not the tragic situation we endured with Grant.

I'm just glad we were reading the book at home rather than having Alexa hear the book in a storytime setting at school.  Without intending, she could scare the bejesus out of her peers!  As she gets older,  I have a feeling we'll have a lot of talks to differentiate Granty's hospital stays versus the positive ones most people experience.....

The strongest and toughest person I will ever meet....a definite inspiration.