Right after Thanksgiving a year ago our daughter, Elizabeth
Hope, flew back home from Chicago – her third such trip during a month her
brother, William, was hospitalized. He’d suffered cardiac arrest after an
accidental heroin overdose. All
that month family and friends took turns at his bedside, talking to him,
massaging him, playing music for him, looking for any signs of possible
recovery. Hospital staff were
remarkable in their tender care and consideration. “Mr. Williams, we’re going to bathe you now.” “Mr. Williams, we’re going to change
your sheets.” “Mr. Williams, we’re
going to shampoo your hair now.” There
was no lack of respect or dignity, however precarious William’s condition.
I remember the nurses on duty Thanksgiving Day taking turns
in a staff room eating their meal from what appeared to be a combination
take-out and pot-luck Thanksgiving. Lots of plastic, paper plates, and aluminum
foil while they shared food, time
and good will with one another – ever alert to the needs of their patients nearby.
William’s Thanksgiving meal consisted of the canned nutrient
he’d been given ever since his arrival, now administered through a feeding tube
directly to his stomach. IV drips
supplied his fluid intake along with various medications depending upon fevers,
infection, and necessary sedation.
Breathing depended upon another tube, running directly to the tracheostomy
in his throat. Survival, and hence
our hope, depended upon this umbilical triumvirate.
Shortly after Elizabeth’s return we were to learn that even
the best of care was not sufficient to restore William. We gathered in his room, his mother,
sister and I. I remember sitting
at the side of his bed, holding his hand and arm, tears cascading, while a
neurologist told us the results of a recent brain scan. The analogy she used was freshly cut
flowers. Upon entering the
hospital his brain was like a bouquet that had just been cut and put in
water. Hence our hope. The lack of oxygen he’d suffered from
cardiac arrest, however, meant that over time the “flowers”, his brain, had wilted
and decayed. William would spend
the rest of his life in a vegetative state. Hope shriveled to grief, then to resolution.
In the days that followed we were presented the option of
removing William from the ventilator.
The alternative was to spend the rest of his days, uncomprehending,
reliant upon tubes, machines, and the kindness of caretakers. It was an offer of a life that was not
a life.
We determined instead to see if William could become an organ
donor. Donorship was possible,
though success was not a given.
For a successful donation William would have to succumb within an hour
after being removed from all life support in order for his organs to be fresh
and vital. After several days of
delay, we convened in an operating room, prepared to say good-bye to our dear
boy. The tube from the respirator
came out of the hole in his throat and he breathed on his own. He’d done this before, on good days,
when there was still hope of recovery.
The clock ticked, he survived the hour, and we returned as a family to
his hospital room. He continued
breathing on his own for another twenty hours. Cardiac arrest or no, his heart and spirit were strong until
the end.
This year, almost exactly to the day, I drove again to the
airport and picked up Elizabeth
for the first time in a year. Not
just Elizabeth. Elizabeth, our
grandchild-to-be, and Johnny Anderes, a father-to-be. A year later we’re waiting again. This time until early March. Like a Russian nesting doll, there is hope inside our
Elizabeth Hope. A proper umbilical
cord connects mother to infant, an infant growing toward first breath, first
steps, first words. There’s
already a strong heartbeat. We’ve
much to be thankful for.
And Thanksgiving today, like many holidays to come, will
also be filled with the remembrance of an uncle this child will never know, but
for the stories we'll tell. Uncle
William we miss you.
