A significant date is fast approaching. I’m trying my hardest to not let my emotions get the best of me but as May 3, 2022 rounds the corner, I can feel the importance of that day weighing heavy on my heart. It will mark 10 months of living a completely opposite life compared to the 10 months prior to that. I had ten full months of unabashed bliss with my little girl before a giant part of her disappeared, never to come back. I thought I knew what love was, but only when her perfect little 7lb 2oz body was placed on my chest did I feel whole even when a part of me was no longer with me. She was next to me where she belonged.
To be honest the first 10 months of her life are becoming a distant memory, partially because the new life we lead so bluntly and unforgivingly devours all of our attention. The tumultuous nature of being a medical parent often leaves you in constant survival mode in hopes that the tiny life you made will indeed survive, (and maybe even thrive) long after you’re gone. I don’t think about the old Grace as much as I used to thankfully. I can re-visit any time I want just by charging up my old iPhone that holds all of her old pictures which is safely stored in a filing cabinet. It’s out of sight, but it calls to me so loudly. I will one day be brave enough to scroll through the photo album that holds the happiest memories I’ve ever had the privilege to experience. But not yet. Not any time soon.
Ten months into this forsaken walk along with all the medical parents that have virtually held my hand and that I’ve yet to meet in person. Parents who I desperately need to hold one day and shed tears with. Parents who showed compassion in a way that only a person who’s been through something similar could provide. I remember every single one that was there flooding my inbox with messages of not encouragement, but of solidarity. The little yellow roller pullout couch in room 368 on the 3rd floor of Scottish Rite rehab unit caught a lot of my tears while all these parents online provided virtual hugs, help, and even care packages to get me through the darkest of times. Looking back on those first days in the hospital now, 10 months removed, I could’ve never thought I would be in a mentally stable enough position to provide comfort in a way that these parents did for me. Today, I had the opportunity to do just that and I grasped it.
I was walking around the lobby with A1 and Grace in the stroller just to get out of the small and stuffy hospital room to listen to the automatic piano playing. In the middle of the lobby, across from Starbucks are a set of green couches splayed out. I took a fussy Grace on a fast jaunt in a brightly lit and the air conditioned lobby to make her giggle and I heard a mother crying amongst the couches. This wasn’t the cry of someone who has walked this path for very long. It was so fresh. The cry was so very familiar even though I’d never heard it before. I knew that cry. It was riddled with fresh devastation and shock.
She is a very petite Korean woman who didn’t speak English. I approached and introduced myself to her while A1 stood in the background with Grace in the stroller. She looked really scared and confused. I asked her what happened and she started crying again. She said her 11 year old boy was diagnosed with leukemia yesterday. Out of nowhere. They were planning on what they were going to have for dinner and decided on shabu shabu and all of a sudden her boy said his hand hurt. They went to their GP and the pain kept getting worse over the next few hours. Later on that evening, they found themselves in a unit at Scottish Rite with an oncologist telling them the most devastating news they will probably ever hear. She exclaimed in disbelief that she thought they were going to the doctor just to have them advise him to take Advil for pain, and all of a sudden they’re now looking at receiving treatment for cancer.
Through tears she asked why I was here and I pointed at my little girl and said she has severe brain damage and epilepsy. I explained that I know her shock and pain because Grace was fine one day and gone the next. The tears started flowing and the pain between us was so palpable and thick, you could cut it with a blunt knife. I got up and asked if I could give her a hug and I held her while she broke down and in that embrace I felt like I was hugging all the moms and dads that came to my rescue when our world was turned inside out. We exchanged numbers and planned to keep in touch. I want her son to be okay so badly, because I wish to believe that there is still some good in the world that exists inside these damn hospital walls. This place where I couldn’t find a parking spot because there are so many sick kids that occupy the rooms of the units.
Parents suffer heartbreak when watching their child suffer. But I’m learning the heart must be the strongest damn thing on this earth. Because despite breaking over and over, how does it continue to beat?