You know it is strange but some of my best memories of Christmas are related to poor health. About 10 years ago I was on crutches right through the whole Christmas season. There is no suitable time to go under the surgeon’s knife, but surely mid-December must be the very worst. Now “Dame Fortune” smiled at me because they weren’t busy in December at the hospital and I was “squeezed in” and operated on for what a broken ankle on Dec. 21st. Late on the 22nd of December I was sent home. I spent Christmas with my foot in a cast.

I didn’t have to wrap presents that year and I did get to play the role of martyr. It was pretty good except for having to use crutches to get around and the endless “Tiny Tim” jokes that I had to endure. The crutches at least kept me sober that year. There is nothing quite as silly as a grown man crutching around ice and snow after drinking a glass of wine. I ate my face off instead. It is easy to eat too many cocktail sausages or olives when all you have to do is look pathetic and someone will fetch them for you.

This year I am on two pins, but I’ll always remember the Christmas I spent on crutches and relied on the goodwill of others. I may not have been the world’s best patient. My good wife says if I break my ankle again, she is going to shoot me rather than go through the agony of looking after me.

The second memory I have may have been our best Christmas ever as a family. It was 1997 and mid-December. My eldest boy became sick and had to be taken to the doctor. It turned out he had chicken pox. In fact, every person in our family came down with it except for me. I apparently was immune. The cure was time, medicine, and quarantine. We couldn’t visit anyone and nobody could visit us. It was that simple. We were forced together as a family at an incredibly special time of the year. I did the shopping and my wife with chicken pox did the cooking. Nobody was terrible sick. We were just in quarantine. It was wonderful. We watched movies. We sang songs and we talked to each other. Sometimes now with various social obligations we just get too busy for that. That year we also watched Midnight Mass together on TV. It was a marvellous time of family all helped along by chickenpox.

There was one more Christmas season dominated by a story of health. Many decades ago, my aunt Madge who had raised me through part of my childhood had grown old. She was in her late 80s when she ended up in St. Clare’s Hospital following a severe stroke that happened just before Christmas. She was sent to St. Clare’s because she lived on Pleasant Street and St. Clares was the closest ambulance. She never returned to her home and eventually went to St. Patrick’s Mercy Home where she lived out her days.

I visited her often in hospital and on Christmas Day my wife and our three sons went up to the hospital to visit Aunt Madge. It was after we had opened our presents and the turkey was in the oven. There is no sadder place to be than in a hospital at Christmas is there? Doctors do everything they can to get people discharged before December 25th but sometimes it just can’t be done. So, it was gone to the third floor of St. Clare’s to visit.

It was really quiet with a minimum of patients. Some had visitors but many didn’t. Some were a long way from home this Christmas Day. Then from down the long hall connecting the rooms and the wards we heard a Christmas carol. We thought it might have been a radio at first, but the music grew louder. Eventually at the door of my aunt’s room there appeared a group of young people singing. They were boys and girls about 16 or 17 years old. They looked like the crowd that might be hanging around any street corner or mall. They sure could sing though. The song was Away in a Manger and in the song was something that rang a chord in Aunt Madge’s heart. Her eyes lit up and she smiled a broad smile. It made her day and it made mine.

I remember remarking to my wife as we left the hospital that the world was in good hands with young people like that. This was after all Christmas Day, and these young people had come to a hospital to make people who were alone feel better at Christmas.

You can contact Jim Furlong at [email protected]