Sleeping with the Angels

"Some flowers they never bloom,
and some flowers they just bloom dead."
--Jakob Dylan/the Wallflowers

You will recall a couple of days ago when I posted the email from Steve. To refresh memory, Ryan was born on June 16 and three days later stopped breathing.

He died Wednesday after so much effort. He made it all of ten days, following CPR, hospitalization and surgeries to help him.

The funeral is out in the Pittsburgh area, where Steve & Vicky live. My in-laws called last night to let us know they'd seen the obituary in the paper.

I feel so far away ... we haven't seen them in nine years, but kept in contact through holidays. He is a friend of Doug's, but like with all friends of my spouse I make friends with them easily and feel closer than I really should... I barely know these folks, but feel like I have known them my whole life, like Smitty or CJK. I am not so attached and glomming on them that I would jump in the car and rush out to be with, they've got a close core of college friends that they are tight with... so I know they're inundated, cushioned, hugged, loved.

And there is no way on earth I'd be picking up the phone right now to ask "what the hell happened?" But I would like to know the cause... were they able to figure it out? Was there a heart defect? SIDS? Anything? Anyone?

It isn't easy for me thinking about this. I miscarried a baby once, and that was heart wrenching enough. Imagining what it must be like to have held a healthy looking lovely baby boy, only to have him suddenly die on me. I can't even begin to fathom.

I know a lot of people who are pregnant right now... some due in a month or two, others not until winter or right after the new year. All I can say is, I look at them differently, with a little more fear. I feel like I did five years ago when Sheri and Steve lost their baby to HLHS, and there is this hopeless and empty feeling in the base of my stomach that makes me want to crawl back in bed and just sleep.

Children's hospital in Pittsburgh has set up a memorial fund for him. We contributed to the American Heart Association when Sheri's boy passed, and we'll be making another contribution for another friend here now.

And in all this, I look at my son. He is a pain in the ass, a live wire. A freak. A tornado in a trailer park. He exhausts me. He frustrates me. But I have him here to do just that. I have the best ten year old girl in history. I am the luckiest mom around.

I am more aware of my blessings and the responsibility of them.

Overwhelmed by the sense of them, the fact of them. I feel amazed that Geoff made it through being premature, and all the possibilities involved there for what his life would have been like if he'd been born November 22, 1996 instead of his birthday. I'm just so sad and so lucky all at the same time. I am shamed that when I was pregnant with Jessie it never ever crossed my mind that something like this could/would happen to me. I sailed through, had a baby, nonchalant, with ease. I got mad at her when she cried at night. It never dawned on me that she might stop crying, or sleep through a morning with me lounging in my new mother role saying 'hurrah, she's quiet, I can sleep in.'

We are on a geocache hold for today. Jessie is at a pool party, Geoff is spraying the hose. Doug is working on a list of stuff we need to secure for our trip to Maine. That's about it for today. Can't think of anything else to write

the good news, and the sad news

Good News
The first Jackie night went well. We put her in the kennel at 11pm, and she cried until... oh, midnight. I had forgotten how heartbreaking kennel training a new puppy is. We trained Missy in the kennel, and she cried a lot the first couple nights, but eventually got to the point where "go in your place" was a welcome suggestion.

Jackie woke up every two hours, like a baby. How funny is that? Well, she totally is -- a baby used to one situation who now finds herself in another one entirely. Cuddled in a puppy pile with brothers and sisters in a shared cage, she now finds herself alone.

At 2am we ignored her, she pushed the partition down between the front and back, and went back to sleep. At 4 she woke up and sounded frantic, so I went out to discover she'd pooped in the kennel. I took her outside with Kinger so he'd mark the pee places fresh for her... brought them back in, cleaned the kennel... encouraged her back in quietly. She cried for about a half hour, then fell asleep until about 6:15.

The morning has gone incredibly well. She went right out and peed and pooped outside, played ball, ran around with me, came back in, played with Geoff for a while and passed out snoring on the couch. I put her in her kennel, to show her that's where sleeping should happen, and after an hour Doug got up to find her sitting politely and quietly inside, with her tail banging on the inner walls as she recognized him.

I slept until about 10, thank God. I was exhausted! When she got up at 4, I was pretty much awake until almost 5:30. Sometimes I can't just fall back to sleep when I am woken up. She played and played outside with Doug and Geoff, chasing tennis ball, and playing with the chew toys we had in the house. Kinger has mostly just stayed near, paying attention to her and doing his usual thing... happy as usual and not at all irritated or jealous. Relief.

She took a good long nap from 11 to 12, out cold solid by my feet here at the computer. I put her in her kennel again, and she slept some more. She's asleep now again... the kids are eating so I don't want her interfering.

I think we made a good choice.

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Bad News
We got email from a friend of Doug's from back in the day named Steve. Doug and Steve were in cub scouts together, and he was one of the first people Doug introduced me to when I went out to western PA for the very first time. Steve and his wife Vicky welcomed a new baby into their lives, but there's been a snafu.

Here's the email:

This may be the toughest email I've ever written. Many of you were aware that Vicky was pregnant and due this June. She gave birth to our son Ryan at 9:05pm on June 16.

He was born a perfectly healthy baby and did fine for the first two days in the hospital. We took him home Tuesday night and were delighted to spend our first night as a family together.

On Wednesday morning Ryan stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest. He was given CPR by me and then the paramedics before being rushed to a local hospital. After working there for two hours he was Life-Flighted to Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh.

After several hours of surgery he was succesfully placed on a heart-lung bypass machine and has been stabilized. He is in very weak condition but has showed some improvement physically. He was without oxygen for a very long time, though.

The prognosis isn't good but it is not hopeless. We have been praying for him constantly and are thankful that he has survived this long - there were many times Wednesday when we thought he would not.

Please keep Ryan in your thoughts and prayers. He is a strong baby but we would still love a miracle!

Any new parent's nightmare I must say.

This was all too fresh for me... having a friend whose son died at 8 days of age in 1997 due to Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. I remember so much from the day of his funeral, and so much sadness. I never want another friend to go through that at all, ever. No matter what the cause. I forwarded Steve's email to my friend, Sheri, who is now the director of the Massachusetts Heart Coalition, and even with five years distance between her son's death and today, she's still touched by other families dealing with this sort of thing.

Steve asks for prayers -- well. Pray. Please. He's a super guy, flies airplanes for traffic patrol in Pittsburgh. She's a lovely woman. Their wedding is one of the finest memories I have... they deserve a slim chance at a miracle, and as much as I believe that God's plan for them may be different, I'd like to ask him to just make sure that it is that Ryan will be their baby, survive, teach them, grow with them, and not die. Sometimes surviving is worse than death when a child has been through such a trauma at first... brain damage, CP, all sorts of learning disabilities... there is a lot of negative to making it past death's threshold. All the effort though -- all the hope. I want him to make it. I hope that God sees eye to eye with his people.

Alright. That's a downer. Let's finish up.

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I forgot to give the website of the Sterling shelter, for anyone interested in learning more about what they do, or giving them support. They've got an interesting program... they are at Sterlingshelter.org so go check 'em out. Send people you know who are puppy seeking...