Held

"To take a child from her mother while she prays is appalling."

Tomorrow I have a case review with Ellie's infectious disease doctor and the head of the ICU. He will have her autopsy, her medical records and a PowerPoint presentation that he used for her peer case review. I have to go back to the hospital. A place I used to love. But is now the place where the worst thing that has ever happened to me, took place. My memories of the day Ellie died are fleeting, blurry, confusing, terrifying. I barely remember leaving the hospital but I do remember walking out of the door and feeling like all the oxygen had been sucked out of me. I left a part of my heart there that night. We left in the middle of the night, in the darkness of night. Tomorrow I will return in the middle of the day. I am so scared of how it will feel to walk through those doors- my arms just as empty as they were the last time I walked through them.

I'm not sure what I am wanting out of the meeting tomorrow. Part of me feels like it's my job as her mom to look through all of the documents. They are about her. It's hard to think that there is information about Ellie out there that I don't know. It's not going to be easy, to see all those reports with her name on them. I remember the first time we took Max to the emergency room- it was so weird to see his name on the wristband. I noticed Ellie's chart sitting on the desk that night we were there and it made me catch my breath. At only nine months we hadn't really seen her name written that many times and to see it on a chart was like a slap in the face. I'm used to being on the other side of that chart. It's not supposed to be your child's name on the ICU chart. That night the nurses kept giving me that look- I know what that look was because I've given it, I've seen co-workers give it. The "your child isn't going to survive this but I don't want you to know yet" look. I remember telling Dave, "I wish they would quit looking at us like that. I know how sick she is."

I can't believe that the week before Christmas, I am meeting with a doctor to go over Ellie's autopsy. It's sickening.

This song has been a big comfort to me the last couple of days...

Held by Natalie Grant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOufqWodFNo

Two months is too little.
They let him go.
They had no sudden healing.
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling.

Who told us we'd be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We're asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It's unfair. 

This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we'd be held.

This hand is bitterness.
We want to taste it, let the hatred numb our sorrow.
The wise hand opens slowly to lilies of the valley and tomorrow.

This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we'd be held.

If hope is born of suffering.
If this is only the beginning.
Can we not wait for one hour watching for our Savior?

This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we'd be held.