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I recently wrote a narrative piece for a writing class. The subject was personal adversity/hardship. This is my story.
An angel in the book of life wrote down my
baby's birth.
Then whispered as she closed the book “Too
beautiful for earth.”
~Unknown
 |
| Late evening, March 29, 2000 |
It’s mid-morning on
Friday, April 7, 2000. I’m only a few months past my twentieth birthday and
nine days ago I gave birth to the most beautiful miniature human I’ve ever laid
eyes on—Shamilee Tenesa Olson. She has no real hair to speak of aside from that
dusting of newborn peach fuzz so common for babies born into my family, but I
can easily picture her running around a few years from now with bright green
eyes full of love, beautiful blonde curls and a giggle that will radiate pure
joy. I should be giddy with happiness at the prospect of waking up and seeing
her beautiful smiling face every morning for the next eighteen or so years.
Right now, thinking back on the last several days, I’m completely terrified at
the thought of those curls never being anything more than a picture in my mind.
When we got her
home from the hospital last Thursday, everything seemed perfect. My parents had
come up a few days early to be with us for the birth, and my mother had stayed
to help my husband, Brandon, and me adjust to parenthood. Dad had left Friday
morning to make the four-hour return to trip Utah Valley for business. The
weekend had been stressful. At some point on Saturday, Shami started to
struggle with latching on at feeding time. She seemed to be less and less interested
in eating at all.
We had increased
feedings to every hour or so and had been working diligently, trying different
techniques and positions, hoping to find one that would be comfortable for me
and make eating easier for the baby. My angel of a mother was so incredibly
patient and kind as she did what she could to help, including waking me and the
baby several times during the night, so I could try to nurse. We were all
tired, and I was frustrated; I felt like it was my fault the baby wasn’t doing
well. I wanted to take a shower before we tried again. Shamilee was sleeping
peacefully when I laid her down and left the room. I can still remember the
sound of her tiny little baby breaths and feel the soft warm puffs of air on my
neck as she breathed in and out. It was Mom who found her in the bassinette
next to my bed a short while later, her perfect tiny face blue from lack of
breath. We rushed her to the hospital not waiting for an ambulance. That was
Monday afternoon.
Mom had called Dad
to tell him what happened, and he was back in Rexburg before we got home from
the hospital that night. Tuesday morning, they told us she was doing better,
but they wanted to keep her another night to be sure everything was ok. When
Brandon answered the phone Wednesday morning I could tell by the look on his
face it wasn’t good news. We made our way to the hospital and I was able to
touch my daughter’s tiny face for the first time in two days. I wanted so badly
to take her in my arms and just hold her and hug her and tell her everything
was going to be ok, but there were tubes and wires everywhere. With tears of
helplessness in her eyes, the nurse told me I couldn’t hold my baby girl. I
started to cry.
Brandon and I were
shuffled out of the nursery into a room where a doctor explained that Shami had
not continued to improve as they had hoped, and things were much worse than
they initially thought. They didn’t have a clear diagnosis, but they knew that
her kidneys were failing, and they didn’t have the equipment, or the expertise
needed to care for her or make an accurate diagnosis. The nearest possible
chance of hope for her was 240 miles away at Primary Children’s Hospital in
Salt Lake City, Utah. Life Flight had been alerted, and they were prepared for
immediate transport. There was an ambulance waiting to take her to the small
regional airport where she would depart for Salt Lake City. There was only room
for one of us on the plane and we only had a few minutes to decide who. My
immediate thought was Brandon should go. I could still barely walk from the
after effects of a natural delivery and if this was it, he needed that time
with her. She’d been with me nearly every second for the last ten months. I
didn’t want him to miss a single moment of whatever time was left. Once on the
plane, the crew nearly lost her twice in flight. After the second time, it was
decided that she would not survive the twelve-mile trip from the SLC airport to
the hospital by ground, so the helicopter was waiting for them at the airport.
We’ve been in Salt
Lake City for two days now. The door of the family suite we’ve been sleeping in
the last two nights is open, and I can see the doctor walking toward us. For
most everyone else in the Salt Lake Valley, today is a beautiful and cloudless
spring day. But dark and heavy shadows are closing on my heart and I’m
powerless to stop them. The weight of their miserable nothingness is crushing
me from all sides and there is no escape. The paltry flame of hope that had
been trembling with faint but willful determination a few moments ago has just
been extinguished by the look on his face. I’ve always hated hospitals.
At the sight of
his face, my breathing is suddenly difficult and slow. The air around me is
thick with hopelessness and the breathing of it chokes me. Try as I might, I
cannot make myself stop from taking another and another and another. My
conscious mind knows there is no reason to keep breathing and yet my lungs
continue their now torturous task, oblivious to the reality they need no longer
function.
I’m cold—not just
chilly, but that bone deep kind of cold from which there is no retreat and no
relief. I honestly believe I will never again feel warmth of any kind.
Everything and everyone, including myself, seems to hang in silhouette just
outside my reach on the other side of this icy fog of darkness in which I now
exist. I know I’m in a room with at least a dozen other people. Brandon. My
parents. A few of my sisters. My cousin Xenya. Her husband David? There are
others but I can’t focus enough to make sense of their faces. I think someone is touching me—hugging me,
maybe? I can feel nothing but pain in every part of my body, and yet I am numb
from head to toe.
The tears begin to
fall as he walks in the room—or maybe they hadn’t ever really stopped since
Rexburg? They slice down my cheeks like razor blades. I know by the look on his
face that no good can come of what he has to say. I’m terrified to hear the
words and I silently beg him not to speak. If he doesn’t say the words, then it
won’t be real, and if it’s not real then we can all get in the car and go home,
and it will all have just been a bad dream—but only if he doesn’t say the
words. I continue my silent begging, a futile effort to stop time.
He comes in the
room, holding me hostage with the look on his face, and he gently lays the
verbal grenade in my hands, knowing I don’t have the strength to hold the lever
down once his words pull the pin: “I’m sorry; we’ve done all we can. It’s time
to let go.” Completely horrified, I witness the explosion of my heart from
somewhere outside myself. The sharp and jagged edges of each shattered piece
rip a hole through me, shredding my every hope and dream into tiny bits of
nothingness that settle on the floor like dust to be carelessly swept away
later by someone with a broom and no care or concern for what those bits of
dust used to be.
Distantly, I
wondered how many times this act of destruction has happened in this room. How
many times has he been the one to detonate that emotional explosive from which
one can never truly recover?
I search the room
for some sort of diversion. Anything that might provide even a glimmer of
distraction. Everything around me feels distorted. The people around me are
moving so slowly. It looks like they’re all crying, too, but I can’t hear
anything. I search in my mind for the sweet, peaceful sound and the soft breeze
of my daughter’s breath, but all I find is a deafening silence echoing in the
hole where my heart used to be. The fog is getting heavier and the shadows press
tighter and tighter. My ears are ringing now. The buzzing of florescent lights
somewhere above my head is somehow louder than the deafening silence from a
moment ago. The wispy echoes of tears and sniffling around me begin to appear
like silent raindrops on a dark window, running lost and directionless in the
deep, all-consuming blackness of a night with no moon.
There’s so much
dust on the floor. So many lost bits of life left by all the others who heard
those same words of desolation in this room. My entire body is trembling. My
mind is numb. My body is frozen. I want to run, but I can’t move. I want to
scream, but the sound is swallowed by the emptiness.
And then I see it.
A spot on the tile floor near the toe of his left shoe. One corner of the tile
he is standing on is broken. There’s a
piece missing—swept away at some point, probably years ago. The sharp edges
where the tile broke off look like they’ve smoothed out over time, but no one
had repaired the hole left behind. The floor has clearly been cleaned and
probably resealed several times in what has probably been decades since the
loss of that one piece. The sheen of the lacquer finish is visible in the
remaining depression. I wonder how long it has been there—the hole, not the
tile. Had I noticed it before? Why can’t I remember seeing it before now? His
shoes are brown. Why are his shoes brown? He’s a doctor, shouldn’t they be a
color other than brown? Why didn’t anyone fix the hole? Why didn’t anyone care
that there was a gaping hole? What am I supposed to do with the hole?
“You’re welcome to
hold her if you’d like. That’s helpful for some parents.” The words enter my
ears with glaring clarity. Hold her? Before she was born, I had dreamed so many
times of sitting up late nights in the rocking chair, snuggling her close to me
and singing to her softly, moonlight filtering in through the window. In those
dreams, I had been able to feel her breath on my neck as I rocked her back and
forth as she slept. That feeling would be all the comfort I would need in life;
so tiny, so perfect, so peaceful—and now, so gone. I cannot imagine there is
comfort or consolation that could heal the pain I feel right here, right now.
 |
| Shamilee Tenesa Olson March 29, 2000 - April 7, 2000 |
I never did hold
her that day. The body they disconnected from all the tubes and wires in the
NICU wasn’t my daughter. That baby was easily two or maybe three times the size
of the tiny little girl I kissed good bye in Rexburg. She had been comatose
since the Life Flight transport. The failure of her kidneys and other organs
meant everything that went in stayed in, so she swelled like an overfilled
water balloon from all intravenous fluids she received in the last 72 hours of
her life. I remember very little about what happened in the weeks that followed
her death. The only truly clear memory I have was at the viewing the night
before the funeral service. I had been adamant that the casket was not to be
opened for anyone, under any circumstances. Her face had been left badly
bruised from the pressure caused by the oxygen tube that had been taped to her
face and the swelling from the fluids. Brandon’s grandmother arrived before I
did and insisted that she be allowed to see my baby. I don’t remember who told
me the casket had been opened, but I remember people apologizing.
She would be eighteen
years old on the 29th of March this year. I miss her every day. The hole in my
heart is still very much there. I’ve tried to fix it and fill it with various
things over the years, but nothing seems to stick. The edges of the hole have
smoothed out over the years, but the hole is still visible though the lacquers
of time and waxing of life. I keep cleaning and polishing—not to make it go
away, more to accept and make peace with it. I still stub my toe and trip over
the depression left from the loss of such a critical part of myself, but I’ve
learned that I’m a lot stronger than I think. And on the days when I’m not, I
know there’s an angel with her head on my shoulder breathing peace into my life
and telling me everything will be ok.
