Michael's Life Decision by Spiritual Echo |
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This is my son's story and I'll try not to change a single word, but let me step back, retrace some steps and talk about what it feels like to be a mother. Until the doctor validated my pregnancy, I thought I was hot stuff, although the term may have not been applicable in 1974. For the right man, I was a formidable package and under normal circumstances perhaps I might have found a forever plan, but it didn't turn out that way. I married a coward and divorced a fool. But then my son, possibly the only positive thing to come out of that union, thirty years later announced that he wanted to get married to a girl I barely knew. I knew, absolutely, that he was making a big mistake.
I had made a solemn promise to Michael to love anyone he might love. I had proved my oath, over and over again by feeding, nurturing and keeping the door unlocked for anyone he might bring home. The day he called me and asked me to conjure up an engagement ring, I thought if the technology was available, I might reach into the phone and shake him violently, rattle his brains and hope that reason would fall into place, reality restored. Yes, I was in the jewellery business and my child had every right to assume I could spare him retail profit, but he called me on a Thursday afternoon and by virtue of his decision, expected me to produce the said engagement ring within twenty-four hours, just in time for the Thanksgiving feast he planned, staging his proposal against a backdrop of golden leaves and kitchen aromas. I didn't provide the ring and the potential bride never arrived, never witnessed Michael's efforts to create a new beginning, a family of his own. Our Thanksgiving dinner was infused with the bitter disappointment of our missing guest. Like thin gravy, the meal, the ham and turkey, became nothing more than nourishment; the wishbone was placed on the back of the stove. There comes a point in every parent's life when you truly need to let go and as I drove away, I knew that there was absolutely nothing I could say or do that would shift the path or change the course. Michael was ready to turn the blueprints into wood and mortar. Candiss was pregnant. This detail was withheld from me until two days before the birth, at which time I found out that paternity was also questionable. She was living with one man and dating my son at the same time. I was the one who insisted and paid for a DNA test and when the results were revealed, my son blamed me for the truth. The one thing I clearly remember saying was that if I could go to the humane society and pay an adoption fee to bring home a life, then surely I could love a child. I believed myself and still, when Aiden was born, I didn't stumble upon the love affair with this boy naturally. I resented being asked to shift from lost dreams to grandmother in forty-eight hours. But my expectation of truth did not dismiss me from my own moral compass. I struggled with my own rage, the imposition and I surrendered. It gives me absolutely no satisfaction, none to realize that I was right. But, I rationalized and talked myself into acceptance and forgiveness for all the negative thoughts I'd had about Candiss. She taught me a great deal. Foremost, my son does not belong to me. I was granted the privilege of birthing a child through my flesh, a man who has become my best friend, perhaps even an old soul, who may have travelled with me in a previous life. By no means, do I own him nor have the right to impose my will. While I was figuring all this out, Aiden, the son Candiss bore, just continued to grow and take on a presence that began to eclipse any righteous indignation I might still have harboured. I have serious personality flaws. It takes me an awfully long time to get angry. I don't even notice the last straw as it drifts gently down to the pile of crap that has accumulated at my feet, but unless the wind shifts, if that blade of grass lands, it is inevitably terminal. Forgiveness then becomes a shallow expression, but a likely improbability. And so it is true in reverse, when I love, I love completely. I adore my grandson. Aiden has also taught me a lesson in his six short, ill tempered years. My heart is big enough to love equally and irrationally. Michael has his own innate talents, none of which I can take any kind of genetic pride in. He loves unconditionally and oozes compassion. Hardly a push over, none the less, one could easily accuse him of being a bleeding heart. Aiden is Michael's best friend in the making. Yet, the circumstance's of Aiden's conception left little room for celebration or anticipation. Michael thrived as a father and wanted another child, a child he could foster and cherish from conception to resurrection. Below is his story about his daughter, Alexis Marija Pettitt Thomson. February 1, 2008. It was my birthday. It was an early Friday evening. Candiss and I were getting ready to go out and do something for my birthday when she called out from the front hall. "Mike, your birthday present is in the bathroom." I thought she was joking, or she had left a "present" in the toilet (an acquired sense of humour.) As I looked inside the bathroom, there was a small pregnancy tester sitting on the corner of the counter;a small pink plus symbol visible in the window. I started to cry immediatly, and hugged her tightly. We had been trying for some time, and after several miscarriages, I had almost given up any hope of having a second child. I still had reservations after the trauma of having so many miscarriages before, but reality set in and by June when we had a 3d ultrasound done. The arms, legs, feet, hands, eyes, mouth were all clearly visible, "Do you want to know the sex?" We had both agreed before that we wanted to know. "Yes," we both said. After a moment the ultrasound technician said, "It's a girl." At that moment I realized I had learned the answer to the ultimate question in the universe. What is the meaning of life? There it was. The tiny flutter of a heartbeat only registering as a flicker of light on the screen. We left the ultrasound appointment blissfully unaware of what was going to happen to our lives exactly 30 days later. June 25th One of my co-workers approached me and told me I had to take a phone call, an emergency. I didn't think I heard her correctly. I think I said, "You're joking?" I raced to Guelph hospital just having found out that Candiss' water had broken, over 3 months early. Things became a haze from that moment. There was talk of sending her to several different hospitals, including one in the United States. Eventually McMaster hospital in Hamilton was chosen and an ambulance took her there. I followed in my own car. Candiss spent four days in the hospital before being released, just to end up back in Guelph hospital. Candiss came back home on a Saturday night. I had no idea this would be the last "normal" night I would spend with her. Sunday brought the abdominal pains were back just as bad. Rather than wasting the time driving to Guelph to be transferred to Mcmaster again, we drove to Hamilton. During the drive I could see Candiss clenching up on regular intervals. I finally said. "They're seven minutes apart, aren't they?" "Yes." Sunday night was fairly uneventful, except for my constant snoring while sleeping upright in the most uncomfortable chair I have ever seen. Monday came, and so did another battery of tests. The "onion breath" nurse was getting on Candiss' nerves. She was cranky, smelled like she ate raw onions for lunch and had no bedside manner whatsoever. "She's not having contractions, her back hurts because of the bed." We didn't know it, but the contractions were there, they just couldn't register them on the monitor, because Candiss was only at 27 weeks along in her pregnancy. The constant wuba wuba wuba of the babies heart beat from the monitor was some comfort, besides the periods of shear panic when the monitor stopped picking it up because Candiss had moved. As long as that was there, my baby girl was fine, right? A 7pm they checked Candiss' dilation again. She had gone from 2cm to 9cm in an hour. "It's time," they said. I panicked. We were only 6 months along, what do you mean it's time? Give her a drug to stop it, I thought. At that moment I was convinced that my baby was going to die. I had no idea what a "NICU" was. Nothing had prepared me for this moment. There were no pamphlets in the waiting room about this, no manuals, no videos. Candiss asked for an epidural. There was no time, the baby was coming quickly. I remember someone saying something about there was going to be a lot of people that come in all of a sudden, so don't be alarmed. I didn't expect 30 people in a room that was no bigger than a small living room. I asked to cut the umbilical cord. I was told I probably wouldn't be able to. July 7, 2008 8:00pm. Alexis Marija Pettitt-Thomson was born. She was tiny. We would later find out she weighed 2lbs 4oz at birth. They wrapped her up in a plastic bag and showed her to Candiss. I could barely see her from the tears that were rolling down my face. Then they said they had to take her and they whisked her away. As quickly as it had all started, it was over. The room was empty, except one nurse. We were left there, no baby, empty handed... Candiss was told to have a shower, get cleaned up, we would be able to visit our baby in an hour or so. After getting ready, we were taken down to the NICU,. neo-natel intensive care unit; a high security area with a magnetically locked door that no one was allowed in without strict permission. The nurse told the receptionist who we were, and she picked up the phone. "Parents for A7 are here....... ok, thankyou" "They're still working on your baby, you can have a seat in the waiting room and I'll come get you when you can go in." An hour went by, then another hour, until we finally got to go into the NICU. A nurse showed us the right way to go in the first time and as we walked by, I looked to the left and saw a couple of babies sleeping in cribs. Oh, I thought to myself, this isn't so bad. We were shown the handwashing station and how to use it properly. Then we turned the corner and nothing could prepare me for the visual onslaught stood before us. Machines, monitors, wires, hoses, tubes, IV's, breathing equipment, and a big plastic box. What was inside looked so small that it didn't seem possible that she was alive. Alexis was hooked up to more equipment than I knew existed She was skin and bones, The skin hanging there; little white fur all over her small little body, but everything was there, right down to the finger nails. I couldn't believe my eyes. As I started to take everything in, I began to realize that the little creature in the incubator in front of me was my daughter. She was here, she was born, but most importantly, she was alive. I was fixated on the blip of the heartbeat monitor. Then the alarm went off. It sounded like the bells in a chapel going off at noon as if you were sitting inside the bell. If I were a cat, my claws would have been embedded in the acoustic tiles of the ceiling. A nurse calmly walked over, pushed the silence button on the monitor and walked away. WTF I said to myself. I watched the heartbeat report in red for the next 10 seconds (which seamed like hours) and climb back up to the normal level. This dance of heart-rate drop, o2 saturation level drop, beep beep BEEP BEEP.... became deafening. The nurse showed us how to open the incubator door, so we could touch our baby. You couldn't rub the skin, as you would tear it. Alexis' skin was thinner than a fine piece of silk. After that we just sat there in silence watching her. Neither one of us knew what to say or what to do. After sitting with her for a while, we realized there were a lot of family members still sitting at home, waiting for news and updates. We went out the front of the hospital into the hot July summer air, completely oblivious to the fact that there would be snow on the ground before we would be taking our daughter home. I made several calls to family members, none of which I can remember; who I called, or what I said. At this point things were just a blur. I then focused my efforts on Candiss. She was calling family members too, but she was not making much sense. I phoned as many of the people back that I could think of to clarify what the updates were, and that we didn't know much at the time. July 24th I woke up and went to work. Shortly after arriving, Candiss called me. She missed a call in the middle of the night from the hospital. They want us to come to the hospital right away. I rush to meet her in Hamilton. When we arrived, we found Alexis' belly swollen and purple. The doctor looked around for a "private" area so they could give us an update on her health. They took us into a small room with a computer screen to show us x-rays. As I was staring at the computer screen, listening to the doctor explain the light and dark areas showing fluid and air pockets in Alexis' abdomen cavity. Candiss was staring up at the wall. She hasn't heard a word the doctor has said; she is fixated on the wall. "What are those?" she asked the doctor, as she points to rows and rows of finely hand crafted boxes with fancy bows and ribbons on them. "I don't want to know, do I?" The doctor coldy replied, "Those are for families whose baby don't make it. We don't want them to leave empty handed." I didn't hear another word the doctor was trying to explain to me. The doctors would spend the next 30 days trying different methods of reversing the necrotising endrocolitis (NEC) that had formed in Alexis's abdomen. I watched, completely helpless as her heart rate monitor dipped into the red, setting alarms off and brought nurses running. They flung open her incubator, put a breathing bag over her face and started performing chest compressions. Her heart had stopped beating. They quickly restarted it. When it was over, I asked the nurse, my voice shaking, "Why did her heart stop?" "Because she's sick, honey. Because she's sick." A portion of her bowel had died. It was decided that surgery was the only solution, and it was scheduled for the next day. August 30th We arrived back to the hospital early and waited all day. Finally at almost 6pm, they took Alexis for surgery. It would be 3 hours before we could see her again. She had a plastic bag covering her belly button. I would later find out she had lost her belly button for the rest of her life and she had a small incision on the side of her stomach. It didn't look so bad. The doctor told me it was right where the small and large intestines meet. They had to remove about 1 inch of her bowel. Her abdomen immediately looked like it was 100% better; the purple was gone, the swelling was going down after only a couple days post-surgery. They began feeding her again, but instead of the food travelling through the entire length of her intestines, it came out the spot where her belly button was, and was collected in a plastic bag. Eventually when she gained enough strength, they started collecting the partially digested food from the bag, and sent it through a re-feeding tube and into the incision on the side of her belly which contained the other end of her intestine. There were 3 "pods" in the NICU. Pod A (Alexis' pod), Pod B, and Pod C. There was a flurry of activity in B-pod one day and they shut down the family waiting area and labelled it "off limits". It was full of family members. The couple in B-pod were going home with a hand crafted box. It was a sad day for everyone and we all cried October 17th Alexis has spent 1 ½ months with her intestines hanging outside her body, disconnected from each other, with the doctors and nurses carefully measuring and "re-feeding" her. She was re-scheduled for surgery and the two ends of her intestines were re-connected. The doctors did not waste any time, only allowing a couple of days for the intestines to heal before very small feedings were started. We were on a race against the clock by this point. Alexis had been on a "Pic-line" now for a couple of months (a line entering her chest into a main artery directly to the heart) providing long term nutrients and medicine. If she remained on this line, it could cause liver damage. The surgery was a success. The next 34 days showed leaps and bounds of progress, and not another hitch. November 20th After 135 days in the hospital we were told we were going home. It felt like this day would never come. Leaving the hospital didn't feel right. It had become home. 135 days is almost half a year. We didn't know anything else. All the nurses and doctors had become like family. As much as we were looking forward to this day, it was hard to leave. My son sent me this file and asked me to fill in the gaps and complete the story. Of course I cried and fumbled with my personal reaction; first with the fragile vulnerability of realizing that at some point, likely late at night, contrary to his nature, Michael sat down and wrote it all down. And then, I struggled with his request. My only answer to Michael was a plea that should I do so, then he needed to promise me he would preserve this essay. I think in some way he expected me to put a "happily ever after" twist on this story; something he could catalogue to give to his daughter at some point in time or, perhaps not. Having endured my mothering, perhaps he fully understands I can't write what I don't feel. So here is the rest of the story. Alexis has recently celebrated her third birthday, weighing in at something close to forty pounds. During her hospital stay, I saw her on very few occasions. In order to have access to NICU a parent needed to accompany a guest. As it turned out, my daughter-in-law wasn't at the hospital often. Once the drama wore off and Alexis' fight for survival began in earnest, Candiss found Bingo to have a greater appeal than a life. In my lifetime, my experience, a baby born so early and so tiny was predetermined to die and although I never voiced my fears, every day I prayed, usually asking for enough strength to be the person Michael needed when he needed to bury his daughter. And, thankfully, my prayers were not answered. However, something did die in the midst of this battle; my son's marriage. I didn't know about my son's fears for his children or his doubts about his wife's mental competence. Only much later did I learn that he had shared his concerns with the psychiatric department and children's aid was called in to evaluate the home environment, reacting not only to Michael's intervention, but also to Candiss, who found the expectation of being an attending parent in NICU; an encumbrance. I don't need a medical prognosis to label Candiss' problem. She is a sociopath, lacking empathy and seeking approval through her ability to manipulate, a self promoting island of indulgence. Twenty days before Christmas in 2009 with a lover in the wings, she left the marriage. The day before Christmas she returned to gather up the rest of her perceived belongings. The truck was in the driveway and her crew of movers were removing furniture, including the kitchen table, ensuring her children could eat their Christmas breakfast on the floor, when Michael returned from his Christmas shopping. Alexis was with her aunt and Aiden was at my home. Neither one was forced to watch the selfish rape of the family, symbolic, but with determined spite. Yes, one could argue that this behaviour might have manifested itself as some long term postnatal depression and as someone who actually lived through that experience, I could possibly be one of the very few people who might have cut the girl some slack. But, it was not necessary. Her exit was as final and complete as a Boxing Day final markdown. If you want to see joy, you should spend some time with my granddaughter. There is no doubt in my mind that she retains a psychic memory about her destined, determination to live. I heard her cry for the first time this week. She's fallen down stairs, occasionally taken an unintentional whack from her brother and her usual reaction is one of bewilderment as if another nurse from NICU was taking another vial of blood. She was spared the indifference and neglect that Aiden experienced. Both children live within the boundless stretch of Michael's heart. I can't measure his love or devotion. He is, in fact, the son, the father and the Holy ghost. Once, late at night, during a sleep-over last year, Aiden woke me up to ask a question. "Grandma, why doesn't mommy love me?" Not wanting to lie, I said nothing, but pulled him closer and within seconds he was back sleeping, perhaps dreaming. "I don't know," I whisper to the moon.
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Spiritual Echo
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