A Lifetime

Next month, Feb 19th will mark a year that my water broke. This anniversary of sorts, has provoked me to remember, against my will or desire to do so, in such grievous detail, how I lost control of absolutely everything. My view to the world from room 876 there at Brigham and Women's Hospital was of the streets of Boston below. The red smear of brake lights and blinkers...signaling who was turning left or right...people in control of where they were going...I remember envying their freedom and control. I watched as a yellow school bus drove up the hill and made a right turn, keeping my eye trained on it as it disappeared around the corner and behind the row of short and tall buildings that spit out smoke from their chimneys and breathed steam from their snow topped roofs.



I remember staring out the window massaging my rounded belly as my sweet Isaiah rolled and flipped within my womb. We were talking and living and loving... him and I.... as much as we could before we would no longer be able to. Before he would be ripped from my body against all my efforts to keep him safe inside. I remember all the doctors and staff hording around me talking and trying to intrude into my thoughts and my silent conversations with my Isaiah.

“Go away leave me alone!” I just wanted to shout at them and make them leave. They thought I was despondent...and naïve. I remember thinking..'Let them. Let them think what they want! They think they are all so smart. They think they know my child and they think they know me but they know nothing about us!' We were connected in a way that no one could ever know! They were the naïve ones... to think that I would ever kill my Isaiah to save myself!



“It's not a matter of 'IF' but of 'WHEN' you will get sick. Do you understand you will become sick enough that you will most likely die...if you don't 'deliver' ” They'd repeat their choruses of death and murder to me and to Kevin every day several times a day. Their egos were bruised and confused that we didn't collapse into a pool of salty tears and just give them free license to do whatever they 'thought' best. We fought them every step of the way. Exposing their method of 'delivery' for what it truly was, ABORTION! Every minute of every day we fought to keep our Isaiah alive and safe within. As every day they fought to wear us down... to just relent and abort our beautiful, sweet Isaiah, whose heart beat strong and whose movements within signaled a strong and healthy baby! For 18 days and nights they pushed and pressured and tried to scare us into doing what they wanted. For 18 days we stayed strong in our resolve to let our Creator our God be the author of life and death for Isaiah and for me!



In the end I don't know why. I don't know why everything happened the way it did. I don't know why my water broke and why Isaiah continued to live within my womb. I don't know why he was born so early against all my best efforts. I don't know why he beat all odds for 10 days when he wasn't supposed to live even an hour outside of my womb. I don't know why he beat all odds; with no bleeds on his brain and why the hole in his heart closed up as it should have and why his kidneys and liver functioned so well and why he beat every odd....I don't know why his staph infection, on such paper thin skin, healed and why he responded so well to treatments day in and day out for those 10 days. I don't know why his lungs just couldn't push out the co2 by the 9th day. I don't know why he lived and I don't know why he died? I don't know why he lived such a short lifetime but I do know it was a lifetime nonetheless! Try as I might to want to think of it all as a bad dream.... he did live and even though 10 days was his lifetime.... what a lifetime it was! He made a difference and his lifetime changed me for the rest of mine and no one and nothing (including time) can take that away!



I love you Isaiah and I miss you every single day!

An Old Text

This afternoon when Kevin left to run a quick errand, he accidentally left his cell phone behind...since he uses this phone for work (police work) he is never far from it. While he was gone, it beeped, alerting me that there was a message waiting for him. So I checked it just in case it was an emergency. The message that was left was nothing significant but I am really terrible at using cell phones and so I clicked a back arrow, by accident, which brought up an old text message from our 17 year old son, Chris, which Kevin had saved...

"Am i allowed 2 tell ne1 yet?"
It was received: Wednesday, October 28th @ 11:25 am

That was the morning Kevin and I had officially confirmed, what we already knew....then announced it to the boys. That was the morning we told them, I was pregnant.

That was the morning that I saw the look of giddy, joy in a stoic man's face. That was the morning that Kevin and I sat at the kitchen island, savoring our last shared cup of coffee...well last cup...for what we thought was going to be at least several months, anyway. That was the morning, that Kevin had to reluctantly, tear himself away from me, to go to work.

I remember the conversation so well...
"How can I go to work...when you get to stay home with the baby all day?" he was truly jealous! I giggled smugly as I gazed into his soft, elated face. I was so proud, that I had made this man, that I loved so much....so happy and hopeful and so full of met and anticipated joy!

"Imagine how much harder it's going to be to go to work once the baby is actually born? You'll never want to leave in the morning." I teased.

We shared a long heartfelt, giddy gaze before he sucked down the last gulp of his coffee and left for work. He hadn't even gotten off of our road before he was calling me on his cell to talk to me all the way to work. Later on that morning he texted our son, Chris, with the news.

Sigh...what power from an unexpected text, from what now seems like, a lifetime ago, that it could cause such a flood of emotion and rememberance. My heart thinks...I should have him and just can't find him. My head knows it was never meant to be the way we planned.

July 4th came and went

Well July 4th came and went and nothing changed except the emotional rollercoaster ride, with its ups and downs. I am beginning to be able to know when the waves of grief are coming and though they are further apart, they do not feel any less painful. I try to brace myself but it is like watching your finger about to be slammed in a car door...its as if it is all happening in slow motion but there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it and just knowing it is coming doesn't mean you don't feel the searing, burning, crunching pain of the door clamping its metal weight down on your finger and trapping it there.

I am tired and going to bed but I doubt I will find sleep! Truth be told July 3rd was worse emotionally, July 4th I was numb...I think there was some nerve damage when the door slammed on me this time. Ugh! So sick of it!