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A SOUL FOR A SOUL?
Private Notes
Private Notes
Notes
My youngest daughter was born on March 27, 2006. As I sat, fully dressed waiting to take her home on March 29th, I received a phone call in my hospital room that she was being rushed to the children's hospital because of a heart murmer. I was terrified. I am not a religious person, but as I waited to be able to see her, I walked tentatively into the hospital chapel and fell to my knees in a pew and prayed for my baby girl to be ok. In the days that followed she was diagnosed with Tetrology of Fallot, one of the heart defects in the family of "blue baby" syndromes. We were fortunate; she was a "pink tet". Her blood oxygen levels never dropped below 87% so she never turned blue. She had open heart surgery on her 6 month birthday and I am happy to say she is a typical almost 13 year old, driving me crazy with her mood swings and attitude. She gets straight A's, skis, loves make-up and fashion, and plans to try out for the track team. Things could've been a lot different. I will never forget that feeling of being completely willing to happily give my life for hers if I could.
Not everyone has my happy ending. Recently, something happened that made me remember, viscerally, that feeling I had in the hospital chapel almost 13 years ago. In August of 2017, the daughter of a girl I went to high school with was in a horrible car accident on the way to her first day of her senior year. She was in a coma for weeks. Her mother and I were friendly in high school but not close. We were facebook friends and she always gave me words of encouragement as I endeavored to become a runner. My heart broke for my former classmate. She kept us all informed on her daughter's progress and the vigil she kept at the sweet girl's side. I remembered what it was like to feel so helpless, to desperately pray just in case someone was listening. I knew what it felt like to pray because otherwise you were powerless to help your child. I empathized in a way many others couldn't.
The beautiful girl came out of the coma. She went through many months of therapy and surgeries. She graduated with her senior class. I was so happy for the family.
My daughter spent a week in the hospital after her birth. She was in the NICU but she looked healthy relative to the other babies there. She wasn't a premie, she wasn't in an incubator, she had no tubes and just one wire hooked to her, monitoring her blood oxygen levels. She spent just 4 days in the hospital after her open heart surgery. The day before her surgery, a doctor sat me down and explained the procedure to me. She told me my daughter's rib cage would be cracked open, her heart would be stopped and her blood rerouted to a heart and lung machine. The surgeon would repair the four things wrong with her tiny, walnut sized heart and then they would shock her heart into beating again. I was told it was possible that her heart wouldn't start again. I was told that if they did get it started, she may still need a pacemaker because there was not guarantee that it would beat properly on its own. Then I was asked to "sign here". I was terrified again. I would have done anything to trade places with my little girl. Surgery went smoothly. When I first saw my baby she was swollen from the anesthesia and she had tubes and wires everywhere and a horrible slice down the middle of her chest. I slept beside her on a cot every night she was there. I wonder how many times I prayed for everything to be ok. I wonder how many times I simply said out loud "please let her be live". I wonder who was listening when I said it.
That was four days for me. My friend spent weeks by her daughter's side. I wonder how many times she said "please let her be live". I wonder what prayers she sent out. I wonder if she pleaded with God to save her little girl. I wonder if she offered her life to every and any deity in exchange for her daughter getting well. I wonder who was listening. In October of 2018, there was a post in my facebook feed; the same wonderful classmate who finally got her daughter back was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. She died last week. My heart now breaks for her daughter.
Unfortunately, my mind goes back to its musings. Did she offer her life for her daughter's in those desperate hours? Probably. Was that offer taken, and if so, by whom? Or was this just another horrible thing that happened to good people for no reason? I can't stop thinking about it. I wonder if she went peacefully believing she traded her life for her daughter's and would do it all over again in a heart beat.
Comments
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Powerful. Iām sorry for the loss of your friend and for the overwhelming sadness her daughter must feel. Thank you for sharing such a personal story. A motherās love knows no bounds.
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Wow. Pretty intense Kim. Sorry for the loss of your friend. This really made me think about a lot of things too. Thanks for sharing.
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A terrifying dyad of stories. I keep thinking of Alice Hoffman's themes from 'The Rules of Magic.' Love more not less. How in living, we are all ruined by love. And isn't that the entire meaning of life - to have the courage to be ruined.
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Nicely done. We often attach much more to events than perhaps we should. As sad as this story is, in reality, it is just the way life goes for so many of us. I find it difficult to believe in any deity who is supposed to love all their children who would inflict, or allow to be inflicted, such horrible diseases upon another as a ātradeā, taking one life to spare another, when, if they really existed, could snap their fingers and heal every sick person on the planet. Unfortunately, hate to say it, unpleasant things happen in our lives, in this world. Not every seemingly answered prayer is a sign, sometimes the probability of the thing happening just happens, prayer or not. If I pray for the sun to rise tomorrow, is that an answered prayer? Of course not, the sun rises regardless of what I think or ask for. The desire to attach a spiritual or religious connotation to life events, especially sad or difficult ones, is strong and goes back thousands of years and is rooted in superstitions. Sadly though, these events you write about, and so many others, are just those life events that happen beyond our ability to control them. If the child lives or dies, it is because of the injuries and or the medical treatment they receive, Iām afraid not much else factors into the matter. On a personal level, I would never believe in a being that would allow all the horrific things that happen to us or that we inflict upon each other to happen. Imagine if there were this man, and he had this huge family, children upon children. Yet he only protected some of them, allowed others to be hurt, killed, abused, left without a home or food, die of untreatable diseases while he sat in his lazy-boy throne watching all these events unfold. What would we as a society do to such a parent? We would arrest him, put him on trial for child endangerment and neglect, we would vilify him and throw him in jail!! Yet so many believe in a deity that does the exact same thing. We praise him when the cards fall our way, chalk up the horrors of life to a divine plan that is beyond our understanding, and on and on we go. Sometimes, life sucks and s*!t just happensā¦I hate to be so blunt, but I have seen too many people who prayed their lives away asking, begging one god or another to help, yet received not a single utterance or response. If the answer is, we canāt begin to understand godās plan, thank you, but Iāll just sit this one out and go with the plan I already have in place. The one where I determine my own happenings. Sorry your friend suffered soā¦but in the end, it was just one of those things that will continue to happen to us as long as humans are on this planet. Iām sure this is not much of a consolation, but perhaps, just another point of view for others to ponder when lifeās difficulties come our way. Take care, keep on writing!