FROM THE EDITOR
Hard Stuff
I recently interviewed a man whose parents were murdered. He decided to forgive the teenagers who killed them and is making a film about the power of forgiveness to overcome violence—work that sat him down with 22 others who had felt the same pain.
For the past two years one of our students—a gregarious, creative, much-loved artist/athlete—has been fighting an illness that’s trying to take his life away, function by function. His parents are taking him anywhere possible to find answers, friends are doing what they can, but doctors are struggling to even diagnose what’s going on.
Hard stuff. I wonder how people push through it.
A sense of humor helps for the less than tragic. You can see that in the answers to our Big Question in this issue: What was your most embarrassing professional moment?
But there are situations that humor’s healing touch can’t reach.
a friend of mine spent much of his childhood in and out of the hospital enduring a handful of surgeries on his legs. He never got to play the sports he loved at the level he’d hoped, so he wrote about the athletes who could. But the past few years he’s been running, training, and, in November, he finished a half-marathon in Indianapolis.
There are all kinds of courage.
My granddaughter, Isabella, has some. Is courage, really, without even knowing the word. Delivered at 28 weeks gestation, she had her first “procedure” hours after she was born.
Walk into a newborn intensive care unit and witness at once the fragility and tenacity of life. Parents’ hope, faith, and love stretched beyond what seems humanly possible. Enduring. Doctors, nurses, and techs living their vocations by the second.
For Izzy, things get better really slowly, sometimes painfully. I finally understand the true meaning of I-N-C-R-E-M-E-N-T-A-L. You rush things at her peril. Baby baby steps.
Procedure to insert a pacemaker. Recover. Surgery to connect her intestines. Recover. Surgery to repair her heart. Recover. Feeding tubes, the vent, weaning off sedation. After six months, the move from the NICU to pediatric intensive care.
Instructions from Mom and “What I Like” details written as if from Izzy herself are posted behind her crib. Most prominently, a tiny handprint with a turtle’s shell painted over the top, the thumb becoming the turtle’s head. Urging everyone, “It’s okay to go slow.”
With all the tubes and lines feeding her and helping her breathe, you can’t just pick up Izzy. So when she’s awake and her eyes search for comfort and her fingers squeeze your own, you rock the bed to soothe her. And sing. As her mother does for hours every day. There will be more to her life than this, you pray. You promise. But you leave the hospital with questions.
i am stubborn and i miss things, but I think I’ve learned something about how we push through hard stuff like this. For a couple of hours, I had no choice.
Last week, Izzy had recovered well enough from her tracheotomy that she could be held again. With her mom and dad meeting with doctors out of town that night, it was my turn to hold her. My first time doing a “long hold.” I was excited but anxious as I sat in the rocker next to the crib and one nurse picked up Izzy while the other gathered the nine lines attached to her.
“Ready, Grampa?” the nurse asks, lowering Izzy toward me. An alarm goes off as they lay her on the pillow in my lap, carefully placing the lines beside her.
“Got it,” the other nurse calls out, silencing the squawking machine.
Holding Izzy for the first time I begin to “get it” too. Feeling her weight in my arms, snuggling her closer to me, kissing her forehead, Izzy is no longer a patient or an ethical question. She’s a baby, a little girl.
And she’s stirring, squeezing my finger. She opens her eyes, searching the room for someone familiar. I look nothing like her dad, certainly not her mom, or any of her previous holders—she must think she is being attacked by some gray-bearded bear. I’m afraid she’ll turn away, start arching her eyebrows, her eyes darting in confusion.
But those eyes lock on mine. All these months I thought they were almost black, but up close in this light her eyes are a deep, deep brown, and there’s serious fire there!
“Hi, Izzy,” I say, my voice instinctively rising to that higher pitch babies seem to prefer. Her mom calls her Bella, so I try that, too. “Hi 1 0 | WA B A S H MAGAZINE
Bella.” I sing the song I usually sing to her when I visit.
With her tracheotomy, Izzy can’t vocalize. But her mouth is moving. Her gaze is fixed on me, as if I should be able to do something. How do I comfort her, reassure her?
Nothing profound there—she just needs her Wubbanub— the little stuffed bear with the pacifier attached. She lets go of my finger, I slip the pacifier into her mouth and hold it there, she chomps down, and we’re pals. In a couple of minutes she nods off to sleep again, let’s the stuffed bear have the pacifier back. A few more minutes and she’s splayed out in my arms, her chest slowly rising and falling. The monitor shows her pulse back down to 88. She’s so relaxed, looks so peaceful, her mouth making those little half-smiles babies make when they’re dreaming.
For the next two hours that’s my view. My granddaughter sleeping in my arms. I get it. It’s okay to go slow.
i don’t want these struggles for her, or for her mom or her dad, my son. I don’t wish her pain, their pain, on anyone. But how is it that we see most clearly, cherish most deeply, when we’re working through the hard stuff?
Thanks for reading.
STEVE CHARLES
Editor | charless@wabash.edu