Having the sense to know a good day when you see it

Beverly Beckham

The Boston Globe

August 2, 2015

Every day that someone you love is not in a hospital is a good day. That's it, plain and simple. Nothing else matters.

I know this. I've been taught this again and again. And yet, I am constantly forgetting, sweating the small stuff and making mountains out of molehills.

A few weeks ago, it took me 6½ hours to drive to Manhattan. Traffic was awful. My phone went dead. And because my phone is also my GPS, I got lost.

And annoyed. With reason, right? I was stuck on Interstate 95. The power cord for my phone, which always worked, didn't. Plus, I had no map.

But, really, what was so God-awful about any of it?

I was in an air-conditioned car with two of my favorite people, a 6-year-old who gets car sick but didn't this time, probably because we were hardly moving. And his 8-year-old sister who regaled me with colorful stories about the building of the New York City subway system, "Did you know that more than 16 people died building the El, Mimi? And that lots of people were killed in 1918 in an accident in Brooklyn?"

The fact is we were not the Donner Party. We were not in a covered wagon with wilderness all around. There were signs to New York everywhere. We were surrounded by cars and people. We had music. And we were not starving. We had Goldfish and Tic Tacs. Plus we stopped three times to eat. All in all, it was a good day.

As most days are.

Count your blessings, my mother used to say.

And I do.

But then I forget. When there's traffic. Or the train's late. Or the printer won't work. And though I should know better, though I do know better, I lose perspective.

Last week, perspective came back with the swiftness of a guillotine slamming down.

My cousin's granddaughter, Kallan, had a heart procedure. Kallan is 5 years old. She's had one open heart surgery and five catheterizations before. She was born with tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia, a rare and complex heart defect. On her CarePage — a free, private website that Children's Hospital Boston provides to families so that they can, by e-mail, update a lot of people at the same time — her mother wrote about trying to explain to her 5-year-old why she has to go to a hospital and have lung scans and EKGs and needles, when other kids do not, beating herself up as all mothers of sick children do, for not being able to fix her daughter, for not being able to change places with her.

Kallan had to wait all day for this latest catheterization, although it was scheduled in the morning, because the child in surgery before her was in the operating room longer than expected. It was a long, long day for that child's family, too.

Days spent waiting at a hospital are always long. And they don't always end on a high note. Kallan's procedure did not completely fix a serious problem. So she will need more intervention sooner rather than later, news no one wants to hear.

When my granddaughter Lucy was only 2 months old, she had open heart surgery at Children's. She weighed just eight pounds. Her heart was the size of a walnut.

That was a long, long day for us — a day being stuck in traffic would have felt like a suite at the Ritz. That day didn't end on a high note, either. There were complications. Three doctors huddled at the foot of Lucy's crib, speaking in whispers about what to do next. It was August. The Red Sox were in town. Outside, the street was full of happy people. Inside, our family stood shell-shocked and wept.

Those were hard days. But the hard days pass, and you put them behind you.

And you find yourself complaining again about the most ridiculous things.

Kallan's family is in the thick of hard days. And in the thick of hard days, you know what really matters.