A Life Too Short – Part 2

 

I told you in my most recent post that our family suffered through emotional agony recently when we lost our grandson, Adam Ray Matthews, before he was even due to be born.

To add to our horror his mother Danielle’s condition continued to deteriorate.  It looked like we might lose her too.

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While we and the medical personnel tried to hold out hope, Danielle’s condition kept going downhill.

Before Adam’s birth, phone calls had been coming in sporadically enough for Travis to field them but now, like a dam breaking, communications started to pour in.  Danielle’s parents and relatives along with our other sons who came to be with us, as well as Annie and I, took calls from people from every corner of the United States and many countries of the world.  The organization which arranged Travis’s mission trip to Africa last year called to offer support, as did many of the friends he made while he was over there.  Danielle’s cousin called from Australia.  My nephew Shawn called from Alabama to tell us that a group of soldiers there offered to deluge the blood bank with all the donations they could handle, if needed.  Others stopped by the hospital to bring food, or did the same to their house.

Mad Dogg (his legal name), a Christian biker, dropped in to offer support and quickly became like a member of the family.  M.D. found God while he was serving a life sentence in prison.  Now he’s free and doing God’s work.

My son, Scotty, and his wife, Erin, came to support Travis and Danielle.  Scotty and Erin lost twins a little over a year ago and still struggle with the loss, yet they opened themselves to more heartache to help the younger couple learn to deal with their own pain.  They shared what had helped them, and what they wished they had known that would have eased their pain.

One of the couple’s friends dropped in from about an hour away to bare his soul about his own loss of a child a few months ago.

We noticed nurses smiling as doctors who were normally all-business, offered words of encouragement, or commiseration.  The nurses themselves lived up to their nickname as angels of mercy.  Several clocked out at the end of their shift, then stayed, off-the-clock.  One was still there three hours after she was no longer being paid to be there.

Most, if not all, committed to praying for the young couple and their family.

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Danielle’s father, Dan, and I escorted Scotty and Erin and their two kids to their car, then headed back to the maternity ward after they left for home.  Shortly after we started back, we passed a small group of people in the hall.  Dan read the evidence and asked, “You looking for Labor and Delivery?”

They confirmed and he said, “Follow us.”

As we walked one of them asked, “Do you have someone getting a baby?”

The question startled both of us.  We both mumbled something like, “Yes,” because we didn’t want to express our pain and temper their excitement at what should be a joyous time for them…should have been for us.

We pointed to the desk as we returned to the room the medical staff had turned into an unofficial visitors’ room for everyone coming to support Travis and Danielle.

We were greeted with, “Danielle’s improving some.”  I don’t remember who told us that.

Many of Danielle’s friends and relatives stopped by.  Three of Travis’s brothers and a couple sisters-in-law made the long drive to show support.  Every brother who couldn’t make it contacted us to express their desire to help, and many other relatives from both sides contacted us for the same reason.

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The pace of Danielle’s improvement increased.  Annie and I had been up for a couple days so Travis pushed us to go to their house to get some rest.  We relieved Danielle’s aunt who was watching our grandkids, Emma and John.  Those two were so much fun that it moderated the pain quite a bit…most of the time.

The next morning John and I sat at the table eating breakfast while Annie and Emma finished getting dressed.  We talked and laughed, until three-year-old John looked up to see me crying.

Emma and John had been told that their little brother had gone to heaven, but they were just too young to understand completely.

Or maybe they understood better than I did.

“Why you crying, Pa?” my little man asked.

“I’m just sad, buddy.”

“Don’t cry, Pa,” John said.  “I love you.”  He reached out his arm and leaned his head against me.

“I love you too, buddy, more than you can ever know.”

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Annie and I dropped John and Emma off at their babysitter’s, then returned to the hospital.  Someone else had committed to picking the two up after school and watching them.

Travis and Danielle were in the room when we got back to the hospital.  It wasn’t the same Danielle we had left the evening before.  She had lost so much of the edema that had bloated her beautiful features.  Whereas she had been bedridden before, she was now out of bed and sitting up in a chair.

The prognosis was great but the doctors still wanted to keep her for a while for observation.

Travis and Danielle assured us they would be OK and told us to go on home and get on with our lives.

We knew their emotional scars would take longer to heal…a lot longer.  But we also knew what they meant.  With assurances that we were only a phone call away we left them in the capable hands of her parents and relatives.

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We would return for Adam’s memorial service…and more tears.

 

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