For The Days When There Are No Words

You will forever be my always.

There are some days in your life that no amount of words can accurately describe how you feel. Today is one of those days. You search your mind for the things buried so deep in the black space, reaching, scratching, begging, screaming for something, anything that will help you understand your emotions, yet you're left blank. I remember this day two years ago all too well. I rolled over that morning, looked at my beautiful, sleeping son and thought "man, I don't want to go to Nashville today, I'd rather just stay home and cuddle with him." But I didn't. I got up, got dressed, woke him up, dressed him and headed to daycare. I parked my car, got out, walked around to the backseat to see him smiling at me, unbuckled him, and carted his big butt to the door. I knocked. It opened. I hugged my baby boy, kissed him on the mouth, told him I loved him and I handed him to Nay-Nay. I've relived that moment in my head a thousand times. That one moment. That one moment because that would be the last time I saw my son alive. The next time I would see my son would be at 10:00 that night at Children's Hospital in Birmingham, brain dead.

There was no "prepare yourself" "we'll do the best we can" "it's going to be okay." There was simply "he is going to die from this." Those were her exact words, the doctor, "he is going to die from this." Those words will be burned in my brain until the day I die. There was nothing I could do. I stared blankly at this petite woman in her early 30s dressed in scrubs with the utmost compassion in her eyes, and thought to myself, "you're joking, right?" I just sat there. The only words I could come up with to say were "can I see him?" I wanted to see my son. I wanted to run to him, unhook him from those machines and save him. I wanted to pick him up and say, "Mommy's here, baby, I'll fix you."

But there was no "this can be fixed," only "he has zero brain activity," "we'll keep him alive as long as we possibly can, but we're not sure how long his tiny body will hold out on the medicine that's keeping him alive." We sat there through the night at his side, helplessly watching nurses come in and out to check for vitals, anything, that would show he was still here with us. But I knew from the very second I walked into his room and saw him that he was gone. The room felt empty. His presence, his spirit, the very essence of him that filled every room he was in, was gone. I could feel it. I think a mother just knows. I knew the second I entered the presence of that tiny body, that it was not my son lying there. His wordly presence was no more.

They told us "be with your baby" but I wanted to scream out at them and tell them this wasn't my baby lying there. This was his shell. I couldn't pick him up. I could barely touch him. So we just stood there, for hours, stroking his hair, holding his tiny hands, kissing the one fat foot that wasn't hooked up to something. I studied him. Every inch of him that wasn't hooked to something or covered by something. I just wanted more than anything to hold my baby. Fix him. I begged him to let me fix him. Just come back to me so Mommy can make it all better. I begged him to come back to me. I begged God to let me switch places with him. "Give this to me, but make him okay again. Make him whole and I will gladly go in his place."

But there was no fixing him and no trading me for him would come for us. A neurologist came into our room in the pre-dawn hours of February 7, 2013, with a team of interns and said "there's nothing we can do for this child," gave me a heartfelt nod and calmly walked out of the room that my son would soon die in. A doctor asked us if we wanted to remove life support as a young nurse stroked his hair and told us what a beautiful baby boy we had. He was beautiful. Too pretty to be a boy. 

We told the doctor we would sign the forms for a Do Not Resuscitate, but I just wanted to hold my son. It took an incredible amount of strength and courage, that I'm still not even sure where it came from, to sign a form telling qualified physicians not to attempt to bring the Earthly being of my child back to life. For me, it wasn't a life, it was only the remaining shell of a body that my son once encompassed that they would be saving. But to put my name on that line was giving them permission to let my baby die. To allow his physical being, the being we made, the one I carried in my womb, the one I birthed, the one I rocked and sang lullabies to, the one I bathed, fed, cared for, protected with my life, that physical being I would never see again until the funeral home. But that was not his soul, his gentle spirit that I envied so much, it was his shell. 

An hour later, his blood pressure bottomed out. I remember the quiet in the room before the screaming beeps of the machines. I remember looking at Keller's dad from across his hospital bed. The look on his face I will never forget. The look of terror and also understanding. I think, as scared as we both were, we knew what was happening. We knew it was time. All I could do was scream at the nurses rushing in the room to give me my son. "Give him to me, NOW!" They told me to sit down in a chair beside his bed. The same young doctor that told me hours before "he is going to die from this" looked at me with tears in her eyes. She paused and just looked at me for a moment, then began to quickly unhook him from what machines she could and turned to me and handed over to me my son's limp, lifeless body to hold for the last time. I held him for a long time. I held him long enough to feel him turn cold then I handed our son to his father. His first born son. His namesake. I watched a giant of a man crumble to a broken, defeated father holding his dead son. I had to leave the room. It broke me. 

I remember everything about the last moments I shared with my son - from the nurses faces, to the look of despair on Evan's mother's face when she walked in the room - I thought she was going to collapse, the feeling of my mother's cold hands on my shoulders as she watched her only child hold her son for the last time, the feeling of Evan's shoulder leaning against mine as he cradled and stroked his son's hair. I remember hearing him sob. I remember the sounds, the wailing of the beeping machines until the nurses turned them off. I remember the sound I swore my heart made when it broke as the machines went silent. And I remember the smell. That smell. The smell of my son. The smell of his hair. I will never forget that smell. Everything but his hair smelled like a hospital, but not his hair. That smell was uniquely his and I will remember it my whole life. 

And I remember walking out of his room and collapsing in the hall. I remember the feeling the exact moment it hit me that I would have to leave this hospital without my child. I would have to go home to an empty crib and tell a three year old daughter what it means to die and wondering how in the world she would comprehend the magnitude of the situation. This precious child that I just lost from this Earth was still survived by a big sister who couldn't possibly understand that her "Kedder-Man" would never exist in this world again. 

I relive the hours of those two days over and over again in my mind. The hours I stood by his bedside.  I will forever. I miss him. I miss his smile. I miss his incredible belly laughs. I miss singing Wagon Wheel to him. I miss his big blue eyes. I miss everything about his being. All I want is to hold my baby. I cannot wait to hold my baby.

"He was my dream. He made me who I am and holding him in my arms was more natural to me than my own heartbeat. I think about him all the time. Even now, when I'm sitting here, I think about him. There could never have been another."