A Day of Double Importance

On Veteran’s Day/Remembrance Day 2021, I read the following to my classes:

Today is Veteran’s Day. That it occurs on 11/11 is no coincidence. Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 when the Armistice with Germany went into effect. Around the world at the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month people take a moment of silence to reflect on the human toll of war. Many of those called to battle did not go by choice, whether by draft or as a socioeconomic mechanism. On this day we reflect on their efforts, sacrifice, and the battle scars both visible and invisible. A poem I recited nearly every November growing up in Canada as we celebrated Remembrance Day was In Flanders Fields, by Canadian poet John McRae. McRae did not survive the war, but his words will live forever.

                 In Flanders Fields
    In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow
         Between the crosses, row on row,
       That mark our place; and in the sky
       The larks, still bravely singing, fly
    Scarce heard amid the guns below.

    We are the dead. Short days ago
    We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
       Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
                              In Flanders fields.

    Take up our quarrel with the foe:
    To you from failing hands we throw
       The torch; be yours to hold it high.
       If ye break faith with us who die
    We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
                                In Flanders fields.

The day after World War I ended, my paternal grandmother was born. The poppy is a symbol from the war for supporting the troops and many suggested to her mother, Mary, that they should name her daughter Poppy. Mary instead went with Marian. Marian died one year ago in Coquitlam, British Columbia, one day before her 102nd birthday. She was born on the frontier in rural Saskatchewan as the wild west was closing up shop, married a serviceman and lived in Europe and across Canada, educated, hundreds, if not thousands, of children in her career as a schoolteacher, and raised a child who would raise me with many of the same characteristics as Marian. She never failed to impress upon me the importance of this day and now it is doubly important to me. You do not need to be pro-war to be pro-veteran.

From L to R: Doug Fraser, Marian Fraser, Alan Stodolka, Baby Bates (I can’t remember which one), Lorraine Bates, and Bing Bates. D. Fraser is in front of Marian.

First Miracle

If someone had asked me if I’d seen a miracle, I’d be unsure until the past few weeks. I’ve seen some amazing places and amazing acts, but I couldn’t be sure if they were true miracles. My mother-in-law’s recovery from a quadruple bypass is a miracle.

When the odyssey began, I was heading out to Washington, DC on a business trip. My husband was given the impression that the problem was not as severe as we would all later discover it to be. I had offered to go out of my way on my drive to DC to bring him clothes, preparing for several days away, but he felt strongly that he’d be coming home the next day.

She didn’t just need a stent. My mother-in-law was transferred over two hours from her home, which is already three from ours, to the University of Kentucky. I left DC a day early, at 9:30pm, my home was on the way between DC and Lexington, KY. I was going to make it to Morgantown, sleep a few hours, do a load of laundry, and continue the five or six hours on to Lexington. I wanted to get there quickly to support my husband.

When I arrived in at my in-laws’ home, Chris and his dad were there. Chris’s dad explained how four complete blockages were discovered in my mother-in-law’s heart. He, an accomplished emergency and internal medicine physician, summarizes it best, “it is one hell of a case.”

Chris and I continued on to Lexington. His mother had the surgery only a day earlier. Upon arrival we went straight to the hospital. I had heard terrible stories about how she looked the day earlier, but now, now she was peacefully sleeping in her chair. It was not the horror I had missed while I was hundreds of miles away.

The next morning, Saturday, I had my first chance to talk with her. You’d be hard-pressed to guess she had major heart surgery. Meanwhile, as I walked past the other 35 rooms in the cardiac ICU, I saw many others who were further out from their surgery in much worse condition. According to families in the waiting room, some were still on ventilators days later, others could not seem to get themselves on the first rung of the ladder to recovery. It was clear how difficult recovery from this type of surgery often is. Yet when I’d see Chris’s mom, I saw none of that struggle. She swore that once they removed the chest tubes, the majority of the pain evaporated. It seemed unbelievable.

She had been transferred to the University of Kentucky Hospital on Wednesday, had a quadruple bypass on Thursday, and on Monday she was discharged directly from the cardiac ICU. Meanwhile, the names on many of the rooms hadn’t changed since she was admitted and the condition of many of those hadn’t improved in the perception of my passing eyes.

Our first stop was a Panera on the outskirts of Lexington. Our next stop was her home in Huntington, WV. Once in her own clothing, it couldn’t be underscored enough that you just couldn’t tell. With several years of medical experience, I know it is common to have more pain several days after surgery than immediately afterward--but that shoe never dropped. She got a second chance, increased our awareness of heart health, and is a model of bypass surgery recovery—even though she didn’t really begin the process at much of an advantage over many of the other patients undergoing this type of surgery.

It’s a miracle.

 First stop from the hospital, Panera