Christmas Eve is one of my favorite days of the year. As a child, it was the anticipation and excitement of Santa Claus. As a young adult, it was the comfort of returning home from college after finals were completed and I could spend time with my family. As an adult, it is the beginning of the joyous celebration of Christ’s birth filled with beautiful music and tradition.

 

We host the Kennedy family each year on Christmas Eve. This year our guests included John’s younger sister Kate, her husband Jeff, and three of their four adult children — Will, a doctor and musician; Margie, a social worker; and Edie, a social media marketer. Also coming was John’s younger sister Ruth, Gerard’s godmother, as well as our brother-in-law Chris, the widowed husband of John’s older sister Ellen, who passed in November 2022. Each year we serve a traditional oyster bisque, among other things, made from a recipe going back many generations. Chris and Will, who both play the guitar, and Jeff, who plays the mandolin, bring their instruments and entertain us with beautiful Christmas music. Some sing (usually John), while others just sit and enjoy. After dinner, we sing Christmas carols around the piano.

 

On Christmas Day, we host my brother Steve and his family. However, since Steve has lived in the Dominican Republic, his three children have carried the torch for the family. Our three boys love being with these cousins — Ian, a Navy pilot; Michaela, manager of the surf school at the American Dream mall; and Andrew, who recently received his master’s degree in financial engineering from Cornell University and is now working at HSBC Bank. On Christmas Day, we open gifts, go to Mass, and then the cousins arrive. We always have a savory roast, potatoes, and several vegetables. Dessert includes delicious Christmas cookies and a birthday cake for Jesus. We started this birthday cake tradition when the boys were very young. Each year, we put candles on the cake and sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus.

 

As is typical in December, I was very busy with all the Christmas preparations — shopping, decorating, wrapping gifts, writing cards, planning for our festivities. Both days of celebration require detailed planning to procure all the food and prepare whatever I can in advance. I had spent a decent amount of time the third week of December looking for the perfect Christmas roast. I visited several stores in the area during the week to see who had the best piece of meat at the best price.

 

On Friday, December 22, I got up early and headed out to buy all the food needed for the two days. It took me several hours to do the shopping, but I was very satisfied that I got everything needed for the perfect Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. When I got home around 12:30 p.m., I gulped down some lunch and left the house to get to work by 1 p.m. I had noticed during my short time home that Gerard hadn’t surfaced yet and that his bedroom door was still closed. I was in a hurry and decided he was probably just still sleeping since he was getting over being sick. I didn’t knock on his door to see how he was feeling. 

 

I worked until 4 p.m. On my way home, John called and said something strange was going on with Gerard. He said he was lying on the floor in his room, face down, and groaning. John said he had gone into his room around 1:30 to ask him if he wanted to play pickleball, and he was on the floor at the time. He grunted when John asked him if he wanted to play. John assumed he was trying to sleep and didn’t want to be disturbed. There have been dozens and dozens of times in the past when Gerard has grunted at us when we have tried to get him up, so this behavior did not seem out of the ordinary. However, when John went back into his room at 4 p.m. and Gerard still hadn’t moved, he became alarmed.

 

“Oh no!” I said, “That isn’t good. I’ll be home in about ten minutes.”

 

When I arrived home, Gerard was exactly as John described. He was lying face down on the carpet in the middle of his bedroom. He was wearing his pajama bottoms and no shirt. He was moaning and groaning and trying to say something. His words were slurred as if he had a thick, fifty-pound tongue. He was trying to push himself up with his arms. He turned his head a couple of times towards me.

 

“Gerard, Gerard,” I said shaking him. “Are you OK? . . . What’s wrong?”

 

He moaned.

 

“Something’s wrong,” I said to John. “Call 911.” As John started to make the phone call, I yelled downstairs to Jack and Ryan and told them to come upstairs. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?” I asked in a panic.

 

“Gerard, groan if you can hear us,” Jack said loudly standing by the doorway. I was kneeling next to Gerard, holding his left hand (with my right) and rubbing his shoulder at the same time with my other hand. He didn’t groan, but looked up at me, gazed in my eyes, and squeezed my hand very hard for about three seconds followed by a shorter, gentler squeeze.

 

“You’ve got this, Mom.” That is what my heart and gut and soul perceive he was saying to me with those squeezes. That was his last communication with us.

 

The EMTs arrived very quickly and assessed the situation. His vital signs were stable. They didn’t know what was going on but noted that he was “very sick,” and they were taking him to the hospital. They dragged him up and put him in a chair and wheeled him down to the ambulance. I grabbed Gerard’s phone, as I knew he would want it once he could look at it. The EMTs said we should meet them down at the emergency room. As they closed the ambulance doors, we peered in the rear window to see a chilling sight. Gerard was strapped to a chair, staring blankly straight ahead. His eyes were glazed over, and it looked as if you could see through to his soul.

 

“This can’t be good,” John said to me. He was right. We then drove to the hospital.

 

By the time they let us into Gerard’s emergency room cubicle, he was hooked up to all sorts of monitors. His eyes were partially open, and he was making some small hand movements. The doctor told us that all his vital signs were stable, and they just needed to figure out what was going on. They were doing blood tests, urine tests, and toxicology tests. They wanted to do a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to test for meningitis. This alarmed me greatly as I know meningitis is very dangerous, but I also knew that panicking wouldn’t be helpful. I started to pray.

 

“Please, God. Please help Gerard. Please help him to get better.”

 

As we were waiting for the staff to come in to do the procedure, Gerard tried to turn onto his side, and his body had small jerking movements. I quickly called the nurse in. She said he was choking and cleared his throat. Shortly there after, the doctor told me that since he seemed to be having seizures, they needed to intubate him to protect his airway, and that he would be put on a ventilator. He would be heavily sedated while he was intubated. He was unconscious from this point on, but his heart kept pumping, his warm chest rising and falling from the air being forced in and out of his lungs artificially. The tube remained for seven days until the harvesting of his organs.

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