My husband and I, running on literally empty, headed back to our room as they began another procedure and we were told they would call us up when they were finished. It was around 9:00pm on Saturday, August 3rd, Julian was almost 24 hours old at this point. I remember telling myself, “Don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep.”
But I did. My husband did. Somehow you think if you fall asleep, you’ll wake up and it will be different. Like maybe this really isn’t our life. It sounds so silly, but your mind can play tricks on you when tragedy is striking.
We were awoken with a knock at our door. In came our neonatologist.
My heart dropped; this can’t be good.
Our doctor laid it out for us. Julian wasn’t doing so well anymore. Oxygen levels kept dropping no matter what position they put him in. The fluid was still present and not fixing itself. Before I even had time to process this, he received a phone call. A look of stress, sadness and hopelessness strained across his face.
“Was that in regard to our son?”, I asked.
“They need me up there” he stated,
“You both need to come now.” And he hurried out the door.
There my husband and I were left, in the room, in our own cries. I didn’t know what to do first, was this it? Were we really losing him? But he’s come so far! How can God let us get all the way until this point, just to take him from us? I kept praying out loud for Him not to take my baby boy away.
No one else was up at the hospital at this time but us. I quickly thought of a list in my head of all the people who never got to meet Julian because we thought we would have tomorrow.
Funny thing is, you always think you have tomorrow.
“I NEED TO CALL THE NURSE!” I yelled to my husband through the tears. “WE NEED OUR SON BAPTIZED!”
My husband called the nurse, she came in and somehow through our cries, understood what I was trying to tell her.
When we got to the NICU, the on-call Chaplain was there waiting for us.
What enfolded next are images and memories that will be etched in my brain forever.
The first thing I noticed when I came up to the NICU was the amount of people who filled Julian’s room. We tried rushing in but were immediately stopped because they were in the middle of a procedure. In a split second I thought about all the amount of people in there who have Ph.D’s and everything in between, how can they not save our son?
I screamed, “HE NEEDS TO BE BAPTIZED!”
The Chaplain was calling out, “I need a bowl! Someone GET ME A BOWL!”
I was frozen. There was that traffic again.
That horrifying, chaotic, traffic of everyone in front of you, yet time is standing still for yourself. Everyone’s going a mile a minute, working to try and save your baby’s life yet you’re left wondering if they are going to pull him through. Worst off, there’s nothing we could do. We were simply “onlookers” so to speak. Watching through glass, crying out, praying, hoping, someone was going to come out and tell us, “He’s all better! We fixed him!”
At that moment, one of our neonatologists grabbed a bowl from God knows where, and with shaking hands, began to pour the holy water into it.
I’ll never forget that moment.
Whether her hands were shaking because she was nervous, whether her hands were shaking because she knew time may not be on her side and she needed it to be done NOW, or whether she was just a damn human being and her emotions got to her because of what she knew was ultimately going to be inevitable, it will be a memory forever etched in my brain.
But his Godparents aren’t here! My husband hadn’t even told one of his best friends that he would be the Godfather. My cousin had already known, but it hurt knowing they both would never be able to meet him.
My husband was sobbing.
I can’t tell you what it does to me when I see my husband cry like that. You know that hard, gut wrenching, soul crushing sob that comes deep from within.
It made me cry harder. I continued to pray and plead with God not take our boy away.
We were given rosary beads earlier from that day from the Priest who came and prayed with us and prayed over Julian as well. It was at that moment my husband threw them across the floor. He was screaming things. “WHY DOES MY SON HAVE TO DIE?!” He kept repeating it over and over again. “WHY IS GOD TAKING MY SON!” He kept saying it over and over again. Through my howls I quickly ran over and said “No, don’t throw these beads, you can’t!”
I felt as if God was watching and now witnessed my husband chucking these rosary beads across the floor. I thought He was going to be mad by that and take our son even faster. I ran over to them and picked them up and the Chaplain, who I’ll never forget, got right into my husband's face as he cried out and she cried with him and said,
“You throw those beads! You do what you need to do! You can be angry with God, God can take it!”
Talk about life changing. Damn.
She was right. She was absolutely right. God can take it.
From that moment on I never questioned my husband’s anger with God again.
We were able to get into the room, and there our son was baptized. We were holding Julian’s hands, kissing his limp body. Listening to the beeping sounds and the chaos that echoed around us. The nurse told me to give her our phone so she can get some pictures of us. There we were, holding each other, crying out loud, screaming to our son not to leave us. We weren’t ready. We had so many plans. What was I going to do? How does one move on from this? How will I even begin to tell a 5 and 3-year-old that their brother died when they have zero concept of death at all? How will I survive without one of my children here with me? Would I want to?
I don’t even know how much time went by as we were standing there, crying out. Miraculously, things oddly started to calm down within 20 minutes. We were then taken to another room and we spoke with the Chaplain. A few minutes later the neonatologist came in, “I have some good news, we were able to get Julian’s numbers back up.”
I felt weak and stronger than ever at the same time! We had thought we were losing our son and this was it, only to be told, he was stable again. Don’t get me wrong, the amount of gratitude and glory I gave to God in that moment was huge, but I was so emotionally drained and physically exhausted from crying out because I had just thought we were losing him. All the goodbyes we did weren’t really goodbyes at all. I was so relieved.
“But, I must tell you", he continued, "this will happen again and keep happening” he said.
“I want to talk to you both about decisions you guys will have to make about Julian.”
Oh no, please God, don’t let it be that talk, the talk that anyone who has ever been faced with making a decision has to make. Please don’t let that be it.
But it was...
