What was the greatest gift you ever gave ?

[liberty2003 0]

I give alot of nice gifts away for xmas but mine wasn't a xmas one..I actually gave my grandma a heart necklace with my grandpa's pic on it about 6 months after he died *easter time* we were all greiving so badly and she was really shutting down..I suprised her with the gold necklace and she cried for about Eleven *yes i said eleven hours* straight..After that she was much better..We still grieve (grandpa died in 1997) Grandma wears that necklance almost all the time..

Kristen

[kellymoos 4]

Just wanted to say that this is a wonderful thread as I sit here crying!!

[DeLarla 22]

Still waiting for that pic, A.

[Teresita 0]

This is a tear jerking thread. Well I think my greatest gift was to a family that are friends of my brother and his wife. I was told this lady and her 2 girls were going to be over my brothers for Christmas dinner so I made sure I included them in my gift buying. I am a frugal shopper (cheap). LOL I bought the girls the same things I bought my nices, Barbies, gloves, hair scruchies and candy. I also got the mom something I don't remember what. The mom was so appreciative, she was going through a divorce at time. I don't see her often but whenever I do she thanks me for that. I just saw her last month and she still reminds me how much it meant to her. Small gestures are great, you never you know how you will touch someone.

[Iluvharleys 15]

I have two, and decided they both were worth telling.

When my Mom was confined to bed before she passed away, DH and I decided to do a bunch of decorating for Christmas. My Mom always loved Christmas, it was our favorite holiday. Well, we went over to my parents house and decorated all the trees in the yard, she could see a lot of them from her bed. I also decorated the room she was in and I hung a big wreath with bright white lights on the wall. We decorated a small tree for her in the room. Everything was beautiful, and the look in her eyes was worth every minute of it. For weeks, she talked about watching the pretty lights at night when she couldn't sleep. The night she passed away, (Christmas Eve) I was holding her hand, and she passed away looking at the wreath with the bright white lights on the wall, she wouldn't take her eyes off it. Today, I have that wreath hanging in my house every year.

The other story is about DH Dad. A few years ago, we decided to rent a big houseboat in Vegas. We ended up right outside Vegas in Henderson. We rented a 56 foot houseboat, and then we flew his Dad to Vegas to meet us. His father is really into nature, so it was the perfect gift to surprise him with. We couldn't have asked for a better trip. We pulled in to dock for the night, and we had a herd of longhorned sheep come down right by the boat. His dad was in heaven. We took movies of it and he talked about it for years. My DH had to go potty, and he ask his Dad to drive the boat while he did. He also told him to be careful because you can't turn the wheel much at all or he'd be in trouble. Well, this other houseboat was heading our way, (way out of bothering us) and he though he should move over. Overcorrected it bad! Well the next thing he was going both ways and we were putting a big "S" pattern behind us. My DH came up on top of the boat saying " What is going on?" You threw me right off the toilet! (He was also taking movies) My FIL tried to get me to take over driving the boat, but all I could do was sit there laughing. We had a great time, my FIL talked about that trip to everyone who would listen. He took his tapes in for his friends to take home and watch. This was the best gift we could have ever given him, and he passed away a few years later, so it was also a great gift for my DH to be able to spend that kind of quality time with his Dad.

[Kimber-lilly 2]

My DH's father was a really neat guy. He and my DH and my BIL worked in the woods (they are loggers) pretty much up until right before my FIL passed away. He was vibrant, funny and my DH ADORED him. Our son was born in July and everyday my DH would pack up the baby and go down to his dad's for coffee and a chat. At this point in time, my FIL was starting to get sick and was weak, but still denying anything was wrong.....one day, I heard a car honking it's horn in the driveway. I looked out and it was my FIL. My DH was in the woods, so I went out to see what he needed. He said he was feeling weak, but wanted to come see the baby. I brought the baby out and we sat in the truck and he just held the baby and talked to him--all kinds of nonsense and funny stuff. After that, his health really took a turn for the worse and my DH was absolutely beside himself with grief. I didn't know what to do for him. It was a terrible time. When FIL died, my DH was just a walking shell of who he once was. It changed him. We had a few bags of my FIL's clothes in bags in the house, and I didn't know what to do with them, so I put them in the shed. Never discussed where they were with my DH. Winter time came and it was just cold and snowy and there wasn't much to do.....For Valentine's day, I got my son's babysitter (who is our neighbor) to take all the sweaters, cut them up and make a heavy sweater quilt for DH. She called my one night and said it was done and could I run down and get it--I literally snuck out of the house and ran down the street in my boots, a slip and my winter coat so DH wouldn't know I was gone! The sweater quilt is beautiful and when I gave it to DH, he instantly knew what it was, cried and said it was the best present he ever got. We still have it, of course and that is the best gift I ever gave anyone.

[DevilMayKare 1]

Oh jeeze. Now you've all got me sitting here with red, teary eyes & I have to go meet family for brunch in an hour! But I've given 2 good gifts lately, so I'll bounce 'em out before I shower...

The first was for my bro's wedding last month. By the time I checked their registry all the "bigger" presents were bought except this $150 stanless steel trashcan. The price was about right so I ordered it but when it came it seemed kind of a strange gift from a sister. So I went out and bought a GOOD bottle of champagne, 3 decent bottles of wine and four cards. I wrapped all the bottles and attached a card to each one and put them INSIDE the fancy trashcan. The first (the champagne) was to open thier first anniversary and the others dated for their 5th, 10th & 15th anniversaries. I wrote a message inside each card and it was very strange to write something that will be read in 2020!! But I bet that "decent" bottle of wine is GREAT by then.

The other present I gave recently (that turned out to be gut-wrenching for me) was for my son's 18th bday last week. I got 18 envelopes w/ blank cards inside and on each wrote Arthur turns 1...., Arthur turns 2, etc and wrote something that he was doing for each year of his life (along w/ some $ enclosed). I had to get out the old albums and Xmas letters to remember exactly which year something happend (like which year he was a pumpkin for Halloween, which year we had his "food Fight" bday party and when he got his kitty). I wrote about how we couldn't keep him from climbing up into his big brother's treehouse when he was 2 and how he brought me a "rainbow" when he was 3 (a multi-colored crayon). I tell ya, I ended up spending the whole day in tears getting this present ready but it was worth it to see my normally contained teenage son (now officially an "adult") tear up as he read each card and feel him sobbing as he hugged me. It's been a loooong time since I've held a crying kid.

[Teresita 0]

OMG Kare, you have me crying. Those were beautiful gifts. All of you guys have been a blessing to others.

[PamRN 0]

I think my greatest gift is something I talked about on here before, so I apologise to those of you who've read this long story before. It still makes me tear up to think about. I do think a gift of caring to anyone is the greatest gift of all.

We had a very elderly male patient who had been in and out of the hospital with heart failure. His fragile little wife was brought to the hospital every morning, and picked up every evening he was there, by their grown children. They'd been married 64 years. On friday the Drs. told her he was at the endstage of his illness and wouldn't be going home this time. The family was devastated of course. They hated to leave him, but his children wanted his wife to rest, and she promised him she'd be back saturday. After they'd gone, we placed him in the last private room on the floor, so when he passed away they would have some privacy. It was that close to the end.

When I came on shift Saturday evening we had no empty beds and we were short a nurse, which meant every nurse had extra patients added to their load. We were very busy. Then I got a call from bed placement asking us if we could possibly take one more patient. I initially said no, then she told me it was a transfer down to us from the imcu. It was our patient's wife. She'd kept her word, she was back on saturday, but by ambulance.

On saturday morning when the children arrived to pick up our patient's wife for her daily visit, they found her comatose in bed. She'd had a massive stroke in the night. The ambulance rushed her to us, and she was admitted to the imcu. They'd avoided telling their father as long as they could, fearing what it would do to him. Now they had to let him know. He was devastated, feeling sad, and somewhat at fault for her stress. His heart was going crazy on the monitors. It scared us a lot.

There wasn't anything we could do for her, she was dying. Machines could temporarily save her body, but she would never wake up.

With the father's agreement. The family decided not to do that to her. They decided when it was time, they wanted her to go peacefully without painful shocking, or tubes and lines tying her down. Without those interventions, she was no longer in need of a crucial imcu bed, so they called us on the medical telemetry unit. The family wanted to have them on the same floor, so it would be easier to see both of them. Of course then I said yes, I'll absolutely take her.

When she got to our unit, I decided to put her in the same room, not just on the same floor. I pushed the husband's bed over. Then we squeezed her bed up against his, so they had a bed together. He weakly scooted over as close to her as he could get and took her hand. While I was assessing her with my stethoscope, I glanced up and saw him gazing at her with such sorrow and love that my eyes teared up and I had to leave the room.

There wasn't a staff member on the floor who wasn't touched to tears by them. A little after midnight, we noticed several of the family members step out in the hall, some quietly crying, a niece came over and said at midnight, it became the couple's 65th anniversary. We all cried with them.

One of our house nurse managers found a bouquet of flowers and took in for the husband to give her, but when she laid them between them, he asked that she move them to the other side of her, he didn't want anything between them in their last hours. That made everyone cry again.

She passed away in the early hours of the morning, still hand in hand with her husband. He accepted her passing much better than we expected. He let her go calmly. Like he knew it was ok. Maybe she'd somehow let him know that since he wasn't coming to the physical home they already had, she'd go first and prepare a new home for them. She must have been busy, because he peacefully passed away 2 days later.

Putting any man and woman together in the same room is against hospital policy/morals/ethics etc... Two beds together in a private room is against hospital policy/fire code, etc... had I been fired over it, I would STILL have known it was the right thing to do, and will never regret having done it.

[Teresita 0]

WOW!!! PamRN

[DevilMayKare 1]

Oh PamRN, now THAT was a tear-jerker!!

Here's a great present I gave this isn't going to make anyone cry, but one of my better ideas.

I was a lit major and I'm an avid reader so I'm a pretty good source for book recommendations. I always have a book in my purse and I learned a long time ago that it was way too much of a pain to carry a large paperback around. I think it was the Shogun series that finally gave me the bright idea of cutting thick paperbacks into 2 or 3 parts. After I split the spine with a razor knife I use duct tape to create a new spine and they always hold together for a reading or two (sometimes I make new covers for the middle piece out of heavy-weight paper).

A friend of mine "discovered" reading a couple years ago (she just never had time before) and seemed to really like the books I recommended. So I went to a used bookstore and bought some of my favorite books for her. Most of these are thick so I cut them all up for her as well. In some places I left little notes for her in the stories, like "Call me when you get to this part!" or some other comment on the story. THe look on her face when she opened the box. It was like, "Uhhh....um... thanks..." She didn't really realize the value of that gift until she started reading and since she's also the type to keep a book in her purse she learned to appreciate the practicality of having them cut-up. Now she RAVES about that present. It took her over a year to get thru that group of books and it really was a present that kept on giving.

And she was able to pass them on!

[PamRN 0]

Kare that's an awesome idea, I love to read too, as do some of my dearest friends... I may have to steal your kare's book segments idea! I love the idea of the lighter weight, and thinking of the anticipation of getting to the next segment when I finish and pass on the current one is cool too.