Lucas Camilo

After almost exactly four days at Children’s Hospital, Lucas is home.  Ten minutes after our arrival we went back outside to get some bags from the car and there was a perfect rainbow in the sky to the north.  A good omen indeed.

Right now we’re somewhat astounded by our good fortune.  Given all that Lucas went through on Saturday and Sunday, and where things stood yesterday morning, it’s downright miraculous that we got discharged today.  Lucas started smiling the second we rolled up his wheelchair and went to pick him up from the hospital bed, and he pretty much kept smiling the entire ride home.

As Burke was driving last night to pick up Lucas’s gear he heard a show on the local NPR station featuring the “interfaith three amigos.”  They were talking about the concept of gratitude and this is what the Rabbi had to say:

“Most of the time ‘thank you’ is almost perfunctory, and sometimes heartfelt, but it is a response to something that happens in the moment.  Gratitude is a bigger category that represents the expression of an open heart, where we become grateful not only for a particular event but for being present at a particular time, for being with the people we are with, and being able to perceive the beauty and the goodness in our world.”

So for now we won’t go down the list and thank all the people who’ve done amazing things and sent love for Lucas and for us over the last four days.   What’s most important is that Lucas is alive, and smiling, and asking for books, and dancing in our arms to “Mister Rabbit”, and lighting up the world with beauty and goodness in the way that he’s been know to do.  Indeed, we are feeling grateful.