Reflecting on my experience over the weekend - I still feel like I'm in a dream. Like I have not woken up and that soon I'll open my eyes and everything will be fine. The news on Friday was such a shock to me that I was in tears a couple of times during the night. I must say I cannot remember the last time I cried, and I remember thinking the same thing while I was crying. The last time that I can recall crying, was when Jonathan was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia in 2002 and they had to insert an IV into his arm. I was crying as much as he was ... but my pain was more one of seeing my son in such discomfort. I cannot remember what time I feel asleep on Friday but I remember leaving the fan on in the bedroom because I needed the 'white noise' in order to sleep - but it made the room chillier than I expected.
It's Saturday 15th January and I woke up around 9 am feeling like I had a fairly good sleep. For some reason ... sleeping in a chilly room can be a good thing. Maybe it makes the brain shut down more than if the room is warm. Or maybe it makes your body concentrate on warming the rest of your body. Who knows? For a minute I forgot about the news of the day before but my mission for the day was to tell my (extended) family so that I can have as many people as possible praying for him. I remember calling my auntie Althea and halfway during the conversation I broke down. I was a bit surprised with myself - I thought I had it under more control. My aunt kindly asked if I wanted her to tell the other members of the family - which was good for me - because I didn't think I could talk to anyone about the news anymore.
The kids did the usual thing that Saturday - watched the Disney channel - their favorite station in the entire world - and had some breakfast. One of the upsetting things for me was that Jonathan was losing weight. I'm not sure what was his weight two months ago - Gabby is sure it was 45 pounds - but when they weighed him on Friday he was down to 40 1/2 pounds. One of my new missions was to make sure he ate something ... and that it was healthy. So breakfast that morning was boil eggs ... which the kids love. Now Jonathan normally eats two eggs (on a good day) but today he insisted he wanted three eggs! This coming from a kid that is hardly eating! But you know Jonathan ... just like his daddy ... he wants to 'bite off more than he can chew' and he ended up eating about 1 egg at first with me coaxing him to eat the other half. In the end he ate 1 1/2 eggs and had two glasses of strawberry milk - which made me happy.
One good thing about Saturday was that we had a small dinner party to go to by a colleague of Gabby's. We were looking forward to it because it would have allowed us the chance to get out of the apartment and also not have to worry about cooking food. We decided to go to church for confession first - that was around 3:30 pm - and since we finished fairly early we went to Costco for some groceries. We arrived by Gabby's friend around 5:15 pm and in true kids style, the kids were very shy (at first) and didn't want to talk or go by anybody. But as kids go - when they are presented with toys - a (remote control) walking dinosaur that roars, a (remote control) car and a (real live) cat - all it takes is 20 minutes and they are not shy anymore!
It's Sunday 16th January and we went to church at Holy Spirit. I know the priest there and I think he is one of the best speakers around so I especially wanted to hear his sermon that morning. I was also hoping that Jonathan would have been administered the sacrament of the sick - so it was a double whammy reason why I wanted to go. After church and receiving the sacrament of the sick we headed over to OfficeMax. Gabby wanted to get two notebooks - a small one to chart Jonathan on a daily basis and a larger one so that she could journal herself. Try as I might - Gabby refuses to use the Journaling software I use - The Journal - so she ended up journaling in on paper. I'm not sure if she started - I'll have to remember to ask her later.
The cool thing about Sunday was that I got this brilliant idea to hold a prayer service over the phone. So at 1:20 pm we reached home and started to prepare for the teleconference prayer service at 1:30 pm. We decided to use the two candles we used to light the altar at our wedding plus another candle we used at the reception. We didn't light the other candle we used to 'take the light' at our wedding - partly because it may have been difficult to find and partly because it does not remaining lighting for a long time after it is lit. So the teleconference prayer service started at 1:32 pm by calling Gabby's parents. Gabby's parents used their three way calling to call my parents - so we only had to worry about one international long distance call. After both our parents were on the phone I used my three calling to call my Aunt - and there we had four families on the phone. It was kind of neat - being able to use technology in that way and my only regret was that we didn't consider inviting more people and making the chain bigger and bigger.
The prayer service was really nice - it lasted about an hour - and during that time Arielle fell asleep and Jonathan was playing. We had promised him that if he stayed quiet we would taken him to the movies - to see the new movie - Racing Stripes. Although he was not as quiet as I would have liked, Gabby convinced me that he behaved relatively good and that we should still go. Of course I did not need much convincing since my other mission for the weekend was to try and spend as much time as I could with the kids.
It's 5:35 pm and we are in the cinema watching Racing Stripes. The movie turned out to be fairly good - although the kids got bored about halfway during the film. As Gabby was saying afterwards - most of the jokes were for either older kids or adults and they probably got tired of seeing horses running!
We ended the day by stopping off in Target. I remember Jonathan seeing some sleeping bags for kids. The kids love to 'camp' out in their bedroom. Just before Christmas, Jonathan would ask for the blanket to be spread above the beds to create a tent so he could 'pretend' that he is camping. For Christmas he wanted to get some sleeping bags to further his experience of camping - but it would have been too many things to buy for Christmas. So when he asked for the sleeping bags that night ... and he was looking so sad when he could not get it ... I decided to cave in and buy two sleeping bags - one for Arielle and one for Jonathan.
I know, I know, I sound like a sucker - but I think deep down instead Jonathan knows something is wrong and my thinking is to try and make it as fun for him as I can ... plus it is really hard these days to say no to him. By the time we reached to the car ... I was not in a good mood anymore.
In looking back, the thing that frustrated me the most was that the news we got on Friday was that Jonathan had a mass. We didn't know what the mass was or even if the mass was something that was seriously dangerous ... and yet I was reacting this way! I still feel like I'm in a dream and that I'll wake up and all will be fine.
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