I’ll Be Back Before Christmas

I’ll Be Back Before Christmas

Three years ago today, Rich and I picked up our 20 year old granddaughter from the Myrtle Beach airport, arriving from Ohio. Alex was waiting outside as we pulled up but we didn’t even recognize her, she was so thin. She told us that “it doesn’t even feel real.. feels like a bad dream I’m just waiting to wake up from.”  We didn’t know how long her visit would be but hoped it would last forever.  After about a month here, Alex started working at Petco where she met another employee who became her best friend.  Stevie would bring her home from work when they both worked the late shift.  He was kind and caring, enough so that when Alex was in severe pain he rushed her to the ER. She was diagnosed with a severe kidney infection and he stayed with her the entire day, holding her hand while Rich and I were rushing back from the Spine Center in Mount Pleasant.  Alex and Stevie seemed like they had known each other forever instead of only a few months.  She was the happiest we had seen her in such a long time and that made us so happy.

The summer went by, fall came and then it was time for Alex to head back to Ohio where we all went to the airport to see her off. Rich, I and Stevie cried as she walked up the stairs to board the plane. The last words she said was, “I’ll be back before Christmas”.  As we were pulling out of the airport, my cell phone rang, it was Alex saying she missed her flight due to problems with the scanner at security needing batteries! We were excited to go back and pick her up, but knew the next day we would go through the tears once again. Watching the airplane take off and stream through the air was not a happy sight.

The following spring, Alex had breathing problems, very rapid heart rate and dizziness. For some reason Alex, who never goes to the doctor, did go and that’s when we received the bad news. She had a tumor in her lung cavity and after scans, MRI’s, biopsies and more, it was determined that the tumor had infiltrated into her spine. Fast forward to November 2016 when she had two back to back surgeries, lasting 12 hours to remove the front tumor then her neurosurgeon carefully entangled the tumor in the nerves of her spinal cord. Part of me knows that God sent her back to Ohio the previous November because the care she received at Cleveland Clinic along with her surgeon team would be hard to duplicate anywhere else.  FINALLY TIME FOR ALEXANDRA’S SURGERY   Christmas of 2015 and 2016 went by and Stevie and us would celebrate Christmas without her here with us, holding on to her words, “I’ll be back before Christmas”.

Fast forward again to September 2017 when we received a phone call from Alex saying she was coming back down, but she was moving down for good! Stevie was waiting for her to pull in our driveway after Alex made the 12 hour drive down! The ironic part is, she left to go back to Ohio in November, 2015 then returned to South Carolina in November, 2017! She kept her promise, she was back before Christmas, only a few years late!

In 2015, Alex spent June through November with us and her best friend. In 2017, she came back in November but left again the following June. But this time it wasn’t a tearful good-bye, it was Alex and her best friend Stevie, who hung on to the hope that “I’ll be back before Christmas” was really going to happen, getting settled in their new home together.

When Alex left on the plane from Ohio to South Carolina, she wrote this doesn’t even feel real.. feels like a bad dream I’m just waiting to wake up from.. but now her thoughts are… little did I know, this was the beginning of some of the best things that would ever happen to me.  I told her that instead of a bad dream, she didn’t realize there was a Prince waiting for her (the Prince didn’t know it either) Sometimes you have to travel down a road to the unknown to find true love and happiness.    So the next time someone says they will be back by a certain time, don’t give up, it may just have a happy ending like what happened with Alex and Stevie.