Holding
This one might be a little rough, so consider yourself warned. As so much we’ve seen and read and watched has been rough over the past few days …
Mark and I had that horrid conversation the other day, that I imagine many parents of the sick have had this weekend. It’s a rather gut-wrenching thing to bring up, but it inevitably comes at times like this: Which do you think is worse, losing a child to something like cancer or losing a child to something like a school shooting?
My answer was quick and unequivocal: School shooting, no question. Now let me be very clear — there is no good way to lose a child. NO good way. None of the options are remotely acceptable, nor should they be. But I have spent years envisioning what our last days and moments with Austin could be like and they’re pretty lovely. Not happy, not good, nowhere near okay. But they’d be filled with an overwhelming display of love. Every second would be spent holding and comforting, crying and remembering, loving and loving and loving.
I’m not stupid. I know it would be horrid. It would be painful and ugly and completely and utterly heartbreaking. But I would hold him. I would get as physically close as whatever machines and tubes he might be hooked to would allow, and I would wrap myself around him and hold him to the end, til he drew his last breath. And that would count for something.
The hardest thing for me watching and reading and thinking, endlessly thinking, about these parents in Connecticut, was the fact that when they went to bed on Friday night, their babies were still lying on the cold floor of their classrooms, bloodied and broken, unmoved, untouched, part of a crime scene. They never got to touch them again, to even see them again. Never, not even dead; the coroner said the parents were shown only photographs to spare them the agony of viewing the actual bodies in such a horrific state.
But I think I would want to see it. I know that may not be wise, that it would be an unbearable image that I would never be able to shake from my mind. But so would the photo, really. I mean, is that truly any easier? I would want to touch my child’s body one more time. Touch their hair, stroke their cheek, kiss their lips, even cold and lifeless. Even unrecognizable. I would not know how to go on without that.
Mark’s not so sure. He thinks the years of pain and suffering that children who die of cancer have to endure might be worse than the single moment of fear. He may be right, if you’re only thinking of the one who dies. In fact, I suppose he is right if we’re thinking only of the victims. Those children on Friday did not suffer long. But their parents will suffer forever.
I choose holding.
Dear, dear Krissy,
Haven’t checked in in a while. Reading your post about the children we’ve lost left me brimming with the tears I’ve been choking back through the last sleepness nights filled with nightmarish imaginings of the carnage in Newtown. Then I read your post about Austin holding hands with a nurse as he made his way toward surgery, “OH MY GOD, his kidney”, is where my mind went. But it was tonsils, tonsils, wonderful, way too big tonsils, just tonsils. (and a finger)
Finally………. I cried. I am crying……….for all those lost children……their parents……their siblings, grandparents……..community…….our so very broken nation……..the world and all we’ve lost in what they might have become.
I just want to put my arms around them all and make it better , but i can’t. I can only cry.
There are no words to convey the horror that happened Friday to those families. But it helps to read yours. I, too, feel that not being able to get to my baby & hold them even after such carnage would have been almost undoable. My heart cries for those parents.
There is no “better” way to lose a child. We never got to see Emily after her death and it was/is a nightmare, even 12 years later. But a prolonged period of seeing your child in pain and suffering? Also a hideous nightmare. It’s a Sophie’s Choice sort of thing. Words fail.
Oh Cynthia. Words fail.
Dave and I had a similar conversation about being shown the pictures and not the actual child. We both agreed that although it probably wouldn’t have been “advised” but i would have fought til my death to hold jillian one last time no matter what condition she was in. Personally I know that I would need to do that. For an hour or a day I don’t know but I would have to be able to cradle her in my arms one last time.
I’m with you … I choose holding. I lost my Ryan to leukemia. There are some horrific memories, but I got to hold him until the end, and that I am grateful for. Much love and prayer for you and your family.
Thanks for articulating my very same thoughts. I was the Head Nurse in the Recovery Room at Rainbow for 17 years. There were times when a child died in the OR, sometimes totally unexpected. We ALWAYS prepared a place for the parents to hold their baby one last time. I am haunted by the fact that the CT parents did not have this moment. All I wanted to do was go there and help make this happen.