The below is part three of a multi-part blog. Read part one and part two.
**Content Warning** This piece contains details about the death of a child (resources available at the bottom of this page) (resources available at the bottom of this page)
My Baby is Gone
The following week after we buried my mother, I had to go back to court to have a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order signed for my daughter. We had discussed it, and she did not want to live on a machine. She was way beyond her years in intelligence and fully understood what that meant. She was tired of battling her dreaded disease.
The Sunday before she died, I spent some time with her at the hospital. Little did I know it would be the last time I would see her alive. When I arrived on the 6th floor, I noticed the walls were covered with bright pictures of fish that the patients had colored. The scenery at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital provides history and memories through various forms of artwork. I arrived at the doorway of my baby's room and saw she was lying in bed watching TV. She had a feeding tube that ran into her stomach and an I. V. attached to a Port-A-Cath in her chest. That's a kind of I.V. used for children whose veins are hard to find. The smell of lemon and bleach cleaning solutions filled the air. The sound of the I.V. pumps was like a bunch of terrible-sounding musical instruments playing throughout the floor. She looked up and said in her always cheerful voice, "Hi Mommy." How wonderful she was.
She was such a loving and caring child; she was truly an angel sent to me from heaven above. She was so kindhearted that even on her deathbed, she brightened up the day for other dying children. There was this little boy, named Michael, with whom she had become good friends. He had Cystic Fibrosis and was having a hard time that day. My daughter wanted to color a picture for her friend. It took all her strength to just sit up in bed, but she did so; she colored a picture for him. Once finished, she had me and a nurse carry her to his room across the hall. She wanted to hand-deliver the picture so she could see him smile. It was amazing how much courage and love she showed in her last days. She gave her present to that little boy, and his face lit up with true brightness. For that moment, they both forgot they were fighting for their lives. It was heartwarming to see that she could still bring a smile to someone else's face even in her worst of times. She had a personality that would brighten any room, always smiling, no matter how bad she felt. You would not expect that from a 12-year-old. My daughter's quality of life had become so poor that she was not living but just existing. She had lost control of all her bodily functions and was wearing Pampers again, like when she was a newborn. She had the worst case of shingles the doctors had ever seen; the sores covered her body from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. Her body was so weak, and she looked so frail that she could barely sit up on her own. Yet here was this child showing more courage and strength than most of us experience in a lifetime. The following day, the doctors sent her home with her foster parents to die.
Three days later, on January 26, 2000, at around 8:00 AM, I was lying in bed when I heard the dreaded sound of the telephone ringing. It was one of the foster parents. She spoke in a trembling voice and said, "It's time. Your daughter is dying." I knew this day was coming. I fought... Oh my God, how hard I fought to keep it from happening, but it had just become too much for her. Her little body had had enough. I hated the pictures that were consuming my entire soul. The time had come, her frail little body had simply had enough and could take no more... So now the time was here, and her foster mom said, "Breathing was slow and shallow. She was so limp and frail that she no longer twitched." She was slipping away from us, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I have never felt so helpless in my entire life. I didn't know what I was going to do.
No parent should have to outlive their child. It seemed like a scene from a dreaded movie. The emptiness I felt was so thorough that the words to describe it simply do not exist. I had to stop this, so I dropped the phone, jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes, and ran out the front door. I went to my neighbors to ask for a ride to the foster parents' home because I did not have a car, and the bus would take too long. He drove me there as fast as he could, but we arrived too late. My daughter had already died in her sleep. I cried out to God, "Why did she have to die so young?" I gathered my strength and went into the house to my daughter to tell her goodbye and let her know that I will always love her. But I was so upset it took me three times before I could muster the strength to enter the room where she was lying. Each time I tried, I collapsed in the hallway to her room in tears.
I finally just gritted my teeth and went on in, and I saw her lying there looking up towards heaven with a smile on her face. Yes, a smile on her face. She died as she had lived. Her skin was pale, her lips were grey, and she had her arms folded across her chest just like my mother's had been. I knew then that she had gone home to be with Mom and the other angels. As I sat down beside her and stroked her long black hair, which was in braids, a feeling of total despair engulfed me. How was I going to live without her? Could I possibly cry anymore? Were there any tears left? I felt as though a tornado of pain and despair had twisted and torn all that I lived for from deep within my soul. All I had left was an overpowering sense of emptiness. It was so crushing, the tears were flowing so profusely, I thought they would never end. I felt as though a deep hollow gorge had opened within my heart, never to be filled again. From within it flowed a pain like I had never known. How was I going to live without my little Angel? No words could describe the pain, oh, how it hurt. Then I remembered what my mother always said, "God won't put any more on you than you can bear." It was that thought that gave me the strength to endure the saddest day in my life. I called my God Sister, Mai, and told her that Dee Dee had died, and I needed her, as I felt I wasn't going to make it. I needed her strength to help me make it through one of the worst days of my life. She left work and was there in what seemed like a matter of minutes. She stayed with me the whole day and assured me I had made the right decision when signing the DNR. I may not have told my sister how I am eternally grateful for her support throughout that ordeal, and I want her to know how much I truly love her and appreciate everything. She has always been there for me when I needed her most.
My sister told me that God was just ready for her to come home. She reminded me that our children are only loaned to us for a while, and when their job is done here on Earth, they go home to be with Jesus. She had been chosen for an important task that could not be completed here on Earth; she had to go to Heaven to conclude her quest. Two days later, we had my baby's funeral at Phillip Robison Funeral Home. Though my daughter could not touch her trust fund while she was living, I was allowed to use it for her funeral, and use it I did. I gave her the most enormous, fanciest, most beautiful funeral that her money could buy.
She had a pink casket trimmed in 14KT gold and laced with white satin. She had eight pallbearers, and I played her favorite song, "Thanks for My Child" by Cheryl 'Pepsi' Riley. The music was beautiful, and the words sounded like they had been written about us. At the end of the song, a little child says, "I love you, mommy," then Cheryl says, "I love you too, sweetheart." When that child said those words, it sounded like my daughter's voice coming through the speaker, and everyone, even all the men, broke down in tears. It was a terribly cold and rainy day, yet all these people had come to say goodbye to my little girl. You would have thought somebody famous had died. The chapel overflowed with standing room only, and her funeral procession was over three city blocks long. Even amidst all the pain and grief, I was overwhelmed and proud to see the living proof of how many lives my daughter had touched with her positively uplifting ways. As they lowered her body into the ground, I broke down and my tears even increased, for I knew that would be the last time I could see her Angelic face, and it was the final goodbye, before her eternal rest. The reality had set in, and I felt like my life was as empty as though it was truly over. I dedicated the following poem titled "My Precious Child" in memory of her life.
"My Precious Child"
My precious child that I had so young,
I love you now and forever to come.
You mean more to me than life itself,
I know we can make it with God’s help.
Life hasn’t been easy for you and I,
But somehow, someway, we seem to get by.
We’ve been through a lot and come a long way,
I am so happy we’ve made it where we are today.
Although we have a long way to go,
I know we will be together as I watch you grow
Older and smarter and more beautiful,
Just like an ANGEL sent from heaven above
You are truly a gift of God’s Precious Love!!!
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