“Oh my God!” I cupped my hands over my mouth in raw joy,
terror, excitement, and unbelief when the ultrasound tech gave me the news. One
month and one day before, my dad passed away at 53 years old. He had a one
percent chance of loss of life during his surgery to replace a mal-formed heart
valve that he was born with. No one expected that this healthy man who we loved
so dearly would leave us so soon. He left my mom, his parents, my sixteen year
old sister, nineteen year old sister, me and my twenty-eight year old sister
with her two little ones asking sweetly, “where papa go?”. The doctor said that
they hadn’t lost anyone in this surgery in years. So why my dad? During the ten days leading up to his funeral
there was whaling throughout the day in my mothers house that was built by my
fathers hands. Every square inch that we looked at and walked on was dripping
with his love for us and His savior. Where there is great love, there is great
sorrow in loss. Our lungs could not sound the hurt that filled our body and
souls, but still they sang long and low.
My mother made a
choice long ago. My dad was not her god or savior. He was not what she lived
for. She lived for Jesus and He is the truest love of her life. So in my
fathers death, she surrendered him to Jesus even that very night, I remember.
We decided we wanted everything off of him. We wanted him to go to Jesus
without tubes or beeping screens, all of us together decided. So the nurses
began their undressing of all the plastic and metal that anchored my dad to
this earth. Before my mother knew what she was doing, she joined in. Setting
him free, giving him up. She removed
monitors, tape, she washed away the dried blood with a damp cloth. We watched
him as Jesus called.
The day before my dad died, the doctor said that he expected
a full recovery but that he thought it would take a bit longer since they had
some trouble putting him on and taking him off of the heart, lung bypass in the
original surgery. They said that he would have to stay sedated for two more
days than planned. My mind swirled about like a tornado, two more days. I
started to weep. In my heart I began to know what the doctor would eventually
tell us, that God was calling him home. I left my baby in someone’s arms and
ran to the chapel in the hospital. He had been under for one day already. I
whispered through sobs, “three days in the tomb, three days. Maybe God wants
him to suffer what Jesus did and then he will rise, and then he will
rise.” But deep inside me I knew. I beet
my fists on the chapel door and then the floor as I sank. “oh God put death to
death!!” Not caring then who heard my honest cries, the cry that my heart aches
with every day. “Put death to death Lord”.
Knowing that I would have to wait with nothing to do I busied myself
with starting a piece of art. I told myself that my dad would live and that we
would want to remember how bad it got, and how God saved us from a great
tragedy. I sketched a heart, the valve replacement, the saw they used to open
his chest and a clock to represent the time that passed. I arbitrarily chose a
time 4:56.
As we waited there in his room for his soul to depart I
asked my mother if she had had enough time with him to say goodbye. She said,
“Everything I wanted to say to him, I said every day. There was nothing left to
say, I said it every day.” When the
sheet that covered his chest started to slip away my mom went to cover him back
up. I asked her if I could see. She pulled the sheet away to reveal his hurt.
The doctors had left him open in hopes that if they gave his heart enough room
to breath, it would have a better chance of recovering. They had covered the hole that was the size
of a dollar bill and the shape of a spade with a clear protective membrane and
packed it with a sponge. My mom placed her hand on the crevice and mine
followed. “thank you dad” I said. If he had not been brave enough to face this
surgery my dad may have died while driving down the road or alone on a job
site. Because he was brave, we got to be there, we got to say our
goodbyes. He let someone saw his chest
open for that, for the sake of being with us. His soul departed sometime
between 4:30 and 5:30 am which was when we left the room. The Doctor chose a
time of death, 4:30. A few days later when I was looking at my sketch book I came across the clock that I drew and I
gasped. I showed it to my mom to see if I was really seeing what I thought. We
both agreed that it was his true time of death drawn in on the clock before we
ever knew he was dying.
His service was packed. It’s only on Easter Sunday that I
have seen our church that holds 1500 people that full. My dad was heavy with
Jesus and people he touched gravitated to his weight. After the service my
family and I did our best to keep from being caught in conversation which was
above our capabilities at that moment. I browsed the food tables that were
layed out so generously by people who prepared so much food. Nothing looked
good to me even though I was hungry, my stomach was upset. That night at my moms house, after everyone had left I found
myself hanging my head over a toilet. A position that felt all too familiar
from when I was pregnant with my son Kent.
I was sure I just had a stomach bug but Reed offered to go get a
pregnancy test just so I could know for sure and not have to worry about the
idea of being pregnant. It didn’t take thirty seconds for the test to turn positive.
I just yelled it, still sitting on the toilet. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Reed met
me with a huge grin as I came out of the bathroom and fell to the floor. I
cried and cried from deep sorrow and joy. My previous pregnancy was quite
difficult with intense sickness lasting into the third trimester among other
things that affected my closeness with my husband and friends. I was scared of
facing another difficult pregnancy all the while dealing with deep grief and a
six month old baby who would be only just over a year old at the time that this
baby would be born. When I finally
composed myself, I stood up and looked over the railing to see my mom and
sister, Tessah hugging all cuddled up on the couch. They were smiling with
tears on their cheeks. For them it was
all joy.
So what could have been the news one month and one day after
dads death that shocked me so much. With my mom holding Kenturion, the
ultrasound tech scanned in silence. The only thing on the screen was what
looked to be an empty womb. I looked away thinking, this is the moment when she
says “I’m so sorry but there is no heartbeat.” I looked at my mom and her face
gave away that she was thinking the same thing. My eyes rested on Kent and I
said to him “don’t be sad if no one is there”. Then the tech began to speak. “so
how far along are you?” “well Dr. Howard scanned me three weeks ago and I was
measuring five weeks so I should be about eight now.” I said. “Oh so the Dr.
already scanned you?” said the tech, “Yes” “and did she tell you twins?”. “Oh my God!” I said in raw terror,
excitement, fear and joy… sweet joy. My mom was crying and she quickly said “are
their two heartbeats?!” The tech said “yes”
and showed us “here is one baby and here is the other one and they both have a
little heartbeat you can see”. “Praise God” my mom said with one hand raised in
the air, “praise God! Blessings, just blessings”
That day Reed had been away buying a new camping trailer for our growing family,
the family that he did not know how much was actually growing. I decided that
if I was going to keep this secret all day until he got home that I was going
to have to distance myself from anyone I knew. I swore my mom to secrecy and
went home. At the house I was restless so I decided to take a walk with Kent.
After the idea of twins sank in a bit I started to feel sad about Kent losing
my undivided attention so I thought a walk with just he and I would be nice. We
walked the Tickle Creek Trail just down from our house in Sandy. I walked the
same trail the day before I went in to labor with Kent. The trail follows
shallow trickling waters through mossy, green forests. When we had walked about
a mile we stopped by the creek and I sat down on a log to let Kent watch the
water. As we sat I breathed. My life was changing with leaps and bounds. It
felt like I was at warp speed, growing, growing in every direction possible. It
felt as though my family and I were all caught in this place of supernatural
spirituality, where nothing was beyond possibility.
I joked with my mom earlier that we were the one percenters. My dad had a one
percent chance of dying from his surgery and without fertility drugs and
invetro, having twins was a one percent chance as well. In reality I guess a veil was lifted to see
truth. We are always living in a place where anything could happen, anyone
could die and anyone could live. As I sat on the log that was mostly decomposed
from water, bugs and moss, I started to notice some bugs that were crawling
around near me, and one crawled up on my leg. It made me think. I am just like
that decomposing log. When I actually breath my last breath I will truly go
into the ground but even now, even at twenty-six I am currently going into the
grave. My body is just in a suspended state of death and dying. Like the log I
was sitting on I am dying. My body is slowly breaking down as I walk in it, as
I carry my baby and two new lives form inside. What a miracle. It’s truly magic
that God takes this dying flesh and creates with it, creates new life. “From
dust we came, to dust we shall return”
Reed joined me in joy that night. His Cheshire cat grin was
bigger than ever as he looked at the ultrasound pictures, silently reading baby
“A” and baby “B” and then “We are having twins?!” and then me, “We are having
twins!”
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