July 7, 2K8

	The Best of Bud

JULY 5, 1999

Sharing the loss of a child

Good morning. Many people experience heartache in their lives. They tie it to set backs, disappointments, broken marriages, and sometimes, just not getting what they want or feel they need.. There are the Donald Trumps of the world that seem to have everything. Maybe they do. Who is to say but those persons themselves? But really, few things hit you harder than the loss of someone you love. Few things hurt more than when you watch all the hopes you have for a baby die with his last little gasp for air and you feel a shudder go through his tiny little body. That is heartache. I carry mine around in my wallet. Today, on his birthday, I am sharing it with you.

Husbands and wives share many things during the years of their marriage. There’s the sex we mistake for love and the love we mistake for sex. Really, the two are not interchangeable. They are just a by product of one another. If the marriage is good, the sex is five to ten percent. If it is bad, then the sex becomes ninety to ninety-five percent.

The most significant part of their sharing is their children. Together, they create them and plan for their futures. They share decisions and in a perfect world, share the task of caring for the children. Those children bring them closer together, and, at the same time, drive them farther apart. Each child is different and special in their own way and are oh so very, very special.

Sharyn and I were very lucky when we met each other. She had Kimberly and Jason, I had Geoff. I was unique in a sense back then. Not many fathers had custody of their children. Even with all the obvious problems, I was doing a fair job of being father and mother alike. Without a whole lot of thought or a very long courtship, we came together, were married, and with our two families we tried to make one.

That in itself is quite a story. The fact that we were successful makes it seem matter of fact. For some reason we are more interested in failures than the successes. We would rather hear about heart ache than joy. No one wants to hear about people who do what they are supposed to each and every day. Instead they would rather hear about the exceptions to the norm and how dreadful everything was because of circumstances that were beyond their control. Back in those days I think I could have easily become one of those losers that everyone loves to hear about had it not been for Sharyn. She made me whole and it was her that kept me focused.

When we found out she was pregnant, we were very happy indeed. If ever there was going to be a child brought into the world that was wanted, ours would be that child. We were in our thirties and had raised children and had a very happy home in which to bring another. The impending birth of our child, a son, made our world seem very bright.

John Walter Beck was born on Friday evening, July 5, 1985. He weighed in at nine pounds and one ounce. He had red hair and brown eyes. His mother never held him.

He didn’t "pink up" immediately and the doctors suspected he had fluid on his lungs. They gave him oxygen through a tiny little mask. Even from the beginning he was a fighter and a south paw. With a good strong left he knocked the mask away from his face, wanting to breathe on his own. Even when they removed the fluid, there was still something wrong. They didn’t know. He seemed big and strong, yet his body wasn’t getting oxygen.

I used to know the medical terminology for what he was born with. Like so much of what happened between Friday evening going on into Saturday morning; then beginning again in the afternoon on Saturday and finally ending in a hospital a hundred miles away in San Antonio on Sunday, it was forgotten.

I remember that on Saturday I asked a friend, a nurse, what would happen if he died. What arrangements would I have to make and how would I go about doing them. At the same time I remember trying to put an encouraging face on for Sharyn, who finally was allowed to see him on Saturday night when I insisted he be baptized..Moments later he was whisked off in an ambulance to a larger facility that specialized in what they suspected was wrong. He was born with half a heart.

If you remember those times, medical science was on the verge of great things. There was the baby in Houston who received a monkey’s heart and lived several days. There were other babies who they tried any number of things in an attempt to give them and their parents even the slightest glimmer of hope. I was offered those choices, too.

The offer came from a very famous Houston heart surgeon during a 3 A.M. phone call. He had a team from Boston standing by ready to fly to San Antonio and meet him and try some revolutionary new procedure. I remember asking him how many successes they had. I also remember him saying they never succeeded. The longest any of the babies lived was a week or so. What do you say when it is yes or no right then and there?

I said no.

At times like that you find out who your friends are. Paul Chinaris, and employee of ours, was waken out of a sound sleep and asked to come and stay with Geoffrey who was eleven then. Joe Kelly, a friend who went back as far as college, rode with me on an eighty mile an hour race to the hospital in San Antonio to get there before John died. The picture in this article was taken only moments, maybe seconds, before he died. It was the only time he was ever held by either of his parents.

Sharyn refused to stay in the hospital. Who could blame her? She checked herself out and Kathy and Wally Ostrom brought her home. By the time I was back from San Antonio, Sharyn was at home with Geoff. Kim and Jason were in North Carolina with their father.

So many things happened in so short a time that it almost seemed like I was watching it all on television and was not living the role, but acting it. Nothing seemed real. He was born and then he was dead. Then we were at the cemetery waiting on a Priest who showed up forty-five minutes late with the heavy stench of alcohol on his breath. That, after he told me there was no cause to have a special Mass or burial service out of the church for our son. That, after no Catholic Priest or nun was available to baptize my son in a Catholic Hospital. An Episcopalian Priest, a woman, baptized him. Even at that, having been raised in the Catholic schools for twelve years, when I needed my church, I felt that it had abandoned me. I still do to this day.

On the morning of July 5th Sharyn and I went to the hospital with love, happiness and hope. On the afternoon of July 9th we quietly drove home from the cemetery empty and wondering what in the world had happened. We would literally spend years never speaking to one another about those five days.

It is events like the loss of a child that can break two people apart. While it certainly could have, it did not. Somehow we made it through and faced the daily life trials that came our way. We came home to Pennsylvania and McKean County and made another life for ourselves. We watched our children grow and become wonderful and good adults. Only recently did we mention our son, John. It was then that we realized that both of us were having dreams in which he talked to us.

Today he would have been fourteen. I dreamt of him last Wednesday and he was telling me something but I can’t remember what it was. I wish I could, and I wish I could remember what I said back. I can’t. But even at that, I am sure he knows that he was wanted and he was loved. I am also sure I told him he was missed so very, very much. I am sure that I told him that.

These are exciting times for us once more. We are expecting our first grand child in the end of August. Again, it will be a baby coming into a situation in which it he is wanted and loved. As we look forward with all the hope in the world, we also look back. As we do, we do so in sadness and loss.

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