It appeared as if life stood oddly still yet incredibly chaotic.  My mind was racing with a million thoughts per second.  I could hear the doctor’s tone and visualize his grimaced expression, as he told us, “He is quite sick we don’t think he will make it much longer.”  My desire to grab him by his white lab coat and beg to do more was curtailed as I begrudgingly accepted that maybe there truly was nothing more he could possibly do.

I never saw the onset of the illness coming.  He was my baby.   Perfect in every way.  My love for him was blinded to the green and purple swelling of his abdomen, a sign of sepsis. This horrible blood infection claims the life of many premature babies. I had read about it but never thought it would happen to our baby.  The doctors were worried from the moment he was delivered and gave me books to read about all the potential risks we might endure.  I would read through them from another person’s eye, not mine.   We would not walk that path, or so I believed.

Uncontrollable tears dropped from my cheeks.  I could not see through the grey mascara fog that covered my eyes.   I didn’t want to see, but I had to. No choice, absolutely no choice. My God, I would take him in a wheel chair, I would give him 24-hour care, and I would go wherever my path lay just to have him home with me. A family, finally a family. Ripped from my plans, stolen from my future.  He was gone.

Five desperate minutes or fifty who knew, time absolutely did not matter.  My head throbbed, my lips swelled, my chest compressed to the very core.  I handed him to Rob, honoring his turn to hold his son.  He too had waited with aching arms for twenty-six days.  He had been the pillar of hope, always seeing the sunshine through the storm: finding a rainbow when none was obvious.  I had no idea where he was when I was begging to hold Jakob, and yet he was a mere few inches away.  Even though he was right there, holding me, loving me, and crying the depth of his sadness, I, engulfed in a mother’s desperation for the life of her child, could not feel his touch. Nothing could penetrate the pain that was piercing every inch of my skin.

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