I remember the last time I sat in one of these chairs while in the hospital with a loved one. The last time, I was physically and mentally desperate for rest, but also emotionally desperate to not close my eyes. I found myself thinking back to that moment, as I sat in the hospital with my dad prior to his ablation and pacemaker placement. I remember that afternoon a few years back, after having stood for the last 10 hours as I had been at the bedside. I remember, I had just ran to the airbnb to shower and make sure all was well before I ‘checked out.’ I remember coming back, standing at the bedside, and a nurse asked me if I wanted to hold her. I said, ‘I can?’ I am unsure of the policies in place, my niece at this point was technically a patient of the organ transplant team, and no longer primarily managed by Children’s Mercy nursing staff. Did I want to hold her? What a silly question. But of course the answer was a fast yes after I realized she’d really asked.
I stepped from her side where I was holding her hand, laying hands on her in prayer, and singing hymns over her, and I sat in the chair. They got all the lines straightened out and accommodated, and with 2 or 3 nurses, a respiratory therapist and I, they transferred her into my arms, which had been draped with a cooling pad and a blanket, and now held the weight of my niece again. I had so so many emotions in that moment. The nurse snuck my phone and snapped a couple pics, I might share them one day, but also, maybe not. But more or less, I was wrecked, hard. In both great and mighty, and also very deeply sad ways. The literal weight of her carried the weight of the week with her. The last 2 days had been spent praying and hoping for a miracle, but God had other plans.
Maybe I was living in the miracle.
Maybe the miracle was God allowing her heart to beat again, so we could have some final moments with her. Maybe the miracle was that time, to allow the nephews, and my brother and sister in law, moments, to try and understand, moments to say goodbye. Maybe the miracle was, though she was not awake, I got to bathe her, wash her hair a couple times, comb it out and put in a bow, cleanse the sticky gunk from the eeg pads off her beautiful head and face, and sing and pray and laugh and weep with her still warm, heart beating, though utterly sadly very unresponsive. Maybe the miracle was in trusting God’s plan, and though I may never meet them, my niece literally lives on in lives saved, by God, through her, in death there was life. While what I prayed over her at the bedside, was in fact not proven to be God’s plan, I spent most of my time over those last 2 days with her, in that chair. Her seemingly lifeless, though functioning body, in my arms. I prayed and sang and sang and sang over her, and oh I wept, deeply and often. My memory is terrible, basically worthless, but I will never forget those moments with her.
Maybe the miracle was God not making my last memory of her earth-side me doing compressions and forcing air into her lungs. Maybe the miracle was the medicine, the nurses and providers, even the chairs. Maybe the miracle was the nurse forcing me to eat and drink, when I felt like nothing else in the world mattered beyond holding her and taking in all I could, every wisp of hair, the angle of her eyes, her button nose, her chubby arms and legs, her belly, her sweet serene perfect beauty. Oh she was a huge splash of joy in my life.
Last night, I tried to sleep in that chair again. A different chair, a different health history, different loved one. I recently (not diagnosed yet) tore a ligament in my knee. Sleep in a step down unit, when your father is on the hospital’s bipap, does not come easy in the first place. Add on top of that screamingly intense make you want to vomit it hurts so bad pain, just existing is extremely miserable. As tired, no sleep, pained me limped back from the bathroom to the waiting room where we waited for the doctor to update us, I walked past a couple, probably in their 60s, husband had a trach in and was requiring oxygen, though was breathing independently, and God really humbled me in that very moment. Thanking him for miracles, all the miracles, every breath, every sleep, every waking. Thanks for chairs God. Thanks for time with loved ones, no matter how short.
