As we prepare for Christopher's celebration on Sunday, my husband and I both took time to write to the officiant to give her our thoughts about all that has happened. He sent his today and while I share so many of his feelings, I was struck by the things he said that I couldn't find words for and his heartbreak as a father. With his permission, I'm sharing some of his thoughts here to be included as part of our story.
As compared to many of my friends, I started the marriage and kids route later in life. I don’t know if that affected my perception of parenthood – but I know that I approached it with a different sense of maturity and responsibility. When Charlie was born in 2010, I was 40 years old and truly had no idea what to expect. Sure, I had friends with kids and I got along great with them, but at the end of the day I could always go home to my quiet “kid-free” space. So, when Charlie arrived it brought home the reality of the commitment that all children require and deserve. I immediately fell in love with his puffy little face and squishy arms, and embraced parenthood fully. I had a friend put it to me one day that parenthood was the best thing he never knew he wanted – I couldn’t agree more. I love being a dad. It is something you just don’t “get” until you are actually there – and once you get there you can’t imagine your life without it. I have told Jennifer many times that I wished we had started having kids earlier.
When we found out that we were pregnant again, it was wonderful because now I knew what to expect and relished in the thoughts of having a new baby in the house. It was more than just something for us, it was something for Charlie. I was an only child to my parents, who divorced when I was three. Both of my parents remarried, and at various times growing up, I lived with stepsisters who were the children of my respective step parents. So while I was not entirely foreign to having a sibling, I certainly never experienced it on an everyday basis. When we found out that it was going to be a boy, I think my anticipation and excitement went through the roof. I began “planning” all of the things we were going to do with our “boys.” Little league, Giant’s games, camping, Disneyland . . . everything that I never experienced with a male sibling. I think that Jenn became equally excited as she was going to be “mom” to her little men – toting them around and watching them make her laugh. I thought back to all of my friends growing up who had brothers, and how they were sometimes inseparable. I beamed at the thought of Charlie loving his brother, showing him the ropes of being in our family and watching my two boys become friends.
In many ways, I have felt that I took everything for granted during Jennifer’s pregnancy. Because she was not a high risk pregnancy, I never even considered “problems” during delivery – let alone our tragic turn of events. I made plans and dreamed dreams of what life would be like with my boys, before I had my boys. In many ways it was the cruelest of ironies that we were forced to come from such a high to such a low, all without warning. And while much of this sounds like feeling sorry for myself, my deepest pain lies in what Christopher will never experience. He was undeserving of any of this, and I’m so devastated by his loss of everything that life has to offer. The mere thought that he will never nurse from his Mommy, fall asleep on my chest, or look into our eyes with wonderment at this strange new world simply breaks me and my spirit.
I’ve never been a religious man and have no strong ties to the concepts of heaven and hell. As such, Christopher’s passing has been particularly painful to me, in that I cannot say with faithful conviction that he is “in a better place” or rests in heaven looking down on us. I so want to believe that death is not just an ending of darkness and emptiness, and is rather a transition to light, love and beauty -- but I simply do not know how to take that step. And because I have never experienced such personal tragedy, it has never felt so important to me that there actually be something there. On the other hand, by finding faith I would struggle with the “why” of our situation and want to know for what reason was this perfect little boy never given the chance to live – what spiritual justification outweighs Christopher being with his parents.
When Jennifer and I planned the celebration ceremony there was a sense of confusion of what to do and how to do it. How do you celebrate a life of three days? How do you share stories and reminisce over good memories that do not exist? How do you draw anything happy out of this? I’ve struggled mightily with these questions, and can only come to one conclusion – that I take this time to thank my son Christopher for what he has given to us. I thank Christopher for the three days that he gave us to meet him, hold his hand and tell him that he was loved. I thank Christopher for opening his eyes in hospital and looking at us, showing us that he had beautiful blue eyes like Mommy, Daddy and his big brother Charlie. I thank Christopher for the nine hours that he bravely fought and breathed on his own – showing us that he was a fighter. I thank Christopher for the gift of time that he gave Jennifer and I to be alone with him, as a family. I love my son with all of my heart, but there will always be a hole for him – never to be filled.
One last thought that I would like to share with you. Over the weekend of the 11th, Jennifer and I came to Squaw Valley to celebrate her birthday. On Sunday night we ate dinner at Westshore Café and sat out on the deck overlooking the lake. Although that weekend had been filled with hot, cloudless days, Sunday proved to be a little cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms. As we sat there eating our food, the music on the restaurant’s sound system played a series of songs that made us think of Christopher. I made the comment to Jennifer that perhaps it was Christopher saying “hello” to us and letting us know that he was there. She got tears in her eyes and gave me a look like “don’t you dare make me burst out into tears right here,” so I said no more. However, as we sat in our quiet moment, we looked out over the lake to see that in the middle there was a cloud burst of rain with the sun concurrently setting over the hill. Well, the rainbow that developed was quite beautiful – quickly drawing the attention of everyone on the deck and pier. And while we shared that rainbow with those strangers, both Jennifer and I quietly smiled thinking that Christopher was in fact saying hello to us.
Thank you to my husband for letting me share this and for being my strength during this time. You put me back together when I'm shattered into pieces...every time. Thank you to our officiant, Christa, who married us in Squaw Valley back in March of 2007--she was pregnant with her son at the time she married us and it's fitting that she play a significant role in this celebration and stage of our life too. I could write a novel of gratitude to all those who have surrounded us with love during this time. I continue to be in awe of the outpouring of support.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Preparations
This Sunday is Christopher's celebration of life. Once we knew he wasn't going to live, I knew we could not honor his life with a funeral but needed instead to honor it with a celebration of peace and beauty. Because that's what he was and that's what I felt when I looked at his sweet, sleeping face.
Trying to put together a ceremony that honors your three day old baby is...beyond words. How do you begin? We had so little time with him. We barely got to know him. Somehow I know we will pull it together and it will be beautiful. As we sort through passages and music, flowers and settings, things seem to fall into place as if they were meant to be. Meanwhile, I'm devastated all over again. Choosing meaningful music, flowers, passages and books to read from has forced me to connect with the grief at its core. These past couple days, the sadness feels heavier than it ever has, even the day he passed or the day I picked up his ashes. It's soul-crushing--an emotional reaction so strong that it's physical as well. I don't know how to handle it, except to sob uncontrollably at the pain I feel and how much I miss him.
I hope the celebration will truly honor his life and while we intended it to be less sad than a funeral, there's no way to avoid the sadness and tears. Considering that we cried when we visited the venue for the first time, I anticipate completely falling to pieces...and that'll have to be okay.
There are so many facets of this that are difficult to process. I can't hold my baby that I carried for nine months. I can't soothe his tears or nurture him with food. My heart aches so badly to do these things. I feel like I have been looking for him in everything I do, everywhere. Desperately. A couple weeks ago, in a place that's very special to my husband and I, we sat at the waterfront of a lake at sunset as some thunderclouds rolled overhead. The setting sun caught some falling rain and created a small rainbow. Call me crazy, call me desperate for signs...call me whatever you want. That peaceful, beautiful moment was him. It was him wrapping his arms around us and sending his love.
The night he passed, I held him, kissed him and told him I love him and to sleep peacefully. In the words of a song we'll play at the close of his service, "Godspeed little man. Sweet dreams little man. My love will fly to you each night on angel wings."
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Time will heal
Six weeks ago on a Tuesday evening my life changed in a way I could have never imagined. Six weeks ago I gave birth to my second son, and nothing went as planned. As my husband and I anxiously waited at the hospital for labor to progress, we were unknowingly approaching this life-altering moment. I labored for nearly 18 hours and in the last hour before my son was born, my uterus ruptured and my son was deprived of oxygen. I felt the pain. It didn't feel like the labor pains I had felt with my first son, but this only being my second birth, I had no idea that it wasn't normal. As the nurses and doctors were telling me it probably meant it was time to push, I think I began to feel deep down that something wasn't right. I could not push through this pain. Not only that, I was losing strength by the minute, and losing a lot of blood.
I was rushed into an emergency c-section, put under general anesthesia and my son was born not breathing. I believe that's when the doctors discovered my uterus had ruptured. They had to make a decision whether to remove it or repair it, and they were fortunately able to repair it. My son was rushed to the NICU and then later onto Children's Hospital Oakland where he was put under the cooling cap to try to reduce the inflammation in his brain. Unfortunately the EEG and another test that I can't remember the name of showed that he had no brain activity.
I woke up several hours after he was born after having surgery, a transfusion and several tests. The doctors told me what had happened to me and all I could say was "the baby?" I was told he was sick, but I was too medicated to really understand or feel anything. I woke up again several hours later in the ICU, where my doctors began to visit and the hospital's social worker visited and I began to understand that things were not looking good for him. I don't know if I understood yet that he might not survive. They told us they were transferring him back to our hospital so we could spend time with him, since there wasn't anything more Children's Hospital could do. I waited, still heavily medicated and not absorbing what all of this meant.
He arrived later that afternoon and I was finally able to meet him. It shattered my heart to see him. He was perfect in every way. He looked like a sleeping baby. Beautiful and peaceful. You would never know how sick he was except for the ventilator and the monitors he was hooked up to. I got to hold him, and just sobbed and sobbed. My brain was not processing what was going on, but my heart already knew. I was going to lose my baby.
We knew he had fetal acidosis and that was shutting his body down. We could do things to intervene, but the bottom line was that he was essentially brain dead so if we kept him alive, he would almost certainly live in a vegetative state with ventilators, feeding tubes and all sorts of support to keep his body functioning. That seemed so cruel to him, and selfish of us. We knew the right thing to do was remove the ventilator and let him go on his own, and we spent some time with him before we made the decision to do this.
During the time we had with him, we read him stories, held him, changed his diaper, snuggled with him and tried to show him all the love we possibly could. We brought grandparents by and his older brother Charlie to meet him. In a moment that broke my heart even more, I saw the pain on Charlie's face as he briefly held his little brother's hand. I would have never guessed that at 20 months old, he would have any idea what was going on and maybe it was just my imagination, but I swear he knew and he felt it.
We also finally gave him a name the first night that I met him. I felt so strongly that I just needed to meet him before deciding. Christopher had always been a frontrunner name, and as he lay in his bassinet his left hand was curled into a "C". The doctors and nurses told us that the way he was holding his hands and arms was all part of the posturing of a brain damaged baby, and maybe that's all it was. But it felt like a sign from him.
It was Friday night around 5:00 when we decided to take the ventilator out. He gave us nine more hours before he passed. He lived for just over three days. There are times when I still don't believe it, and there are days when my heart and whole body ache with the sadness and emptiness. You expect to lose your parents. You don't expect to lose your children. You don't expect to ever have to pick up your child's ashes or have a memorial service for them. I still don't know how to process this. I never imagined this would be my story, not in a million years, yet here we are trying to keep it together day by day and process this loss.
I'm also trying to find any possible silver lining in this. One is that I have Charlie. He keeps me looking ahead and laughing, even through the tears. If it wasn't for him, I don't know how we would survive. Another is that I actually lived--ruptures can be fatal to both mom and baby and I know I was lucky, even though we still have no idea why this happened. Lastly, the doctors saved my uterus and we can try to have another baby next year. Another baby will never "replace" Christopher, nor will it fill the emptiness in my heart. That spot that he carved out was always meant for him and will always be his, until the day I die.
There's a phrase in a book we read to Charlie frequently that captures everything I feel about both of my sons:
"I'll love you forever
I'll like you for always
As long as I'm living,
my baby you'll be."
Rest in peace, my sweet Christopher. My angel. Time will heal, but my world is forever changed.
I was rushed into an emergency c-section, put under general anesthesia and my son was born not breathing. I believe that's when the doctors discovered my uterus had ruptured. They had to make a decision whether to remove it or repair it, and they were fortunately able to repair it. My son was rushed to the NICU and then later onto Children's Hospital Oakland where he was put under the cooling cap to try to reduce the inflammation in his brain. Unfortunately the EEG and another test that I can't remember the name of showed that he had no brain activity.
I woke up several hours after he was born after having surgery, a transfusion and several tests. The doctors told me what had happened to me and all I could say was "the baby?" I was told he was sick, but I was too medicated to really understand or feel anything. I woke up again several hours later in the ICU, where my doctors began to visit and the hospital's social worker visited and I began to understand that things were not looking good for him. I don't know if I understood yet that he might not survive. They told us they were transferring him back to our hospital so we could spend time with him, since there wasn't anything more Children's Hospital could do. I waited, still heavily medicated and not absorbing what all of this meant.
He arrived later that afternoon and I was finally able to meet him. It shattered my heart to see him. He was perfect in every way. He looked like a sleeping baby. Beautiful and peaceful. You would never know how sick he was except for the ventilator and the monitors he was hooked up to. I got to hold him, and just sobbed and sobbed. My brain was not processing what was going on, but my heart already knew. I was going to lose my baby.
We knew he had fetal acidosis and that was shutting his body down. We could do things to intervene, but the bottom line was that he was essentially brain dead so if we kept him alive, he would almost certainly live in a vegetative state with ventilators, feeding tubes and all sorts of support to keep his body functioning. That seemed so cruel to him, and selfish of us. We knew the right thing to do was remove the ventilator and let him go on his own, and we spent some time with him before we made the decision to do this.
During the time we had with him, we read him stories, held him, changed his diaper, snuggled with him and tried to show him all the love we possibly could. We brought grandparents by and his older brother Charlie to meet him. In a moment that broke my heart even more, I saw the pain on Charlie's face as he briefly held his little brother's hand. I would have never guessed that at 20 months old, he would have any idea what was going on and maybe it was just my imagination, but I swear he knew and he felt it.
We also finally gave him a name the first night that I met him. I felt so strongly that I just needed to meet him before deciding. Christopher had always been a frontrunner name, and as he lay in his bassinet his left hand was curled into a "C". The doctors and nurses told us that the way he was holding his hands and arms was all part of the posturing of a brain damaged baby, and maybe that's all it was. But it felt like a sign from him.
It was Friday night around 5:00 when we decided to take the ventilator out. He gave us nine more hours before he passed. He lived for just over three days. There are times when I still don't believe it, and there are days when my heart and whole body ache with the sadness and emptiness. You expect to lose your parents. You don't expect to lose your children. You don't expect to ever have to pick up your child's ashes or have a memorial service for them. I still don't know how to process this. I never imagined this would be my story, not in a million years, yet here we are trying to keep it together day by day and process this loss.
I'm also trying to find any possible silver lining in this. One is that I have Charlie. He keeps me looking ahead and laughing, even through the tears. If it wasn't for him, I don't know how we would survive. Another is that I actually lived--ruptures can be fatal to both mom and baby and I know I was lucky, even though we still have no idea why this happened. Lastly, the doctors saved my uterus and we can try to have another baby next year. Another baby will never "replace" Christopher, nor will it fill the emptiness in my heart. That spot that he carved out was always meant for him and will always be his, until the day I die.
There's a phrase in a book we read to Charlie frequently that captures everything I feel about both of my sons:
"I'll love you forever
I'll like you for always
As long as I'm living,
my baby you'll be."
Rest in peace, my sweet Christopher. My angel. Time will heal, but my world is forever changed.
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