Emma and Bill: A Story of Birth and Death

“Let’s ask the nurse,” I replied.

Nursing policy in the labor and delivery department of the hospital required that you identify yourself to the receptionist and the nurses attending the patient you wish to visit. Labor and delivery take place in the same room now: no more cold metal tables and bright lights in an operating room. After we received permission, Bill and I entered our daughter’s room at 9:00 on a sunny winter morning.

Nikki moaned, “I’ve been here since 1:00 this morning and I’m not dilated enough. I’m tired and it hurts so much. I can’t have an epidural because of my back surgery.” She began having strong pains, several minutes apart at 9:00 the night before and had been admitted to the hospital.

Two years ago, our daughter had extensive back surgery in which the surgeon inserted titanium rods along her spinal column to correct her acute scoliosis condition. She can only bend from the waist now, and she struggled with her labor. We kissed her and visited with our son-in-law, Tim. After a while, my husband took Tim out for breakfast and I stayed with Nikki, patting her arm and her bulging mid-section. We could hear the baby’s heartbeat on the fetal monitor, strong and steady as she prepared for her momentous entry into the world.

Down in the waiting room, Bill and I chatted and reminisced as we eagerly awaited the birth of our ninth grandchild. Our three oldest daughters and eight grandchildren live in Chicago, so we never attended the birth of any of our grandchildren. This event was exciting as our youngest daughter was giving birth right here in Arizona and we were here to see it.

All during the day, we took turns visiting Nikki and Tim. It was a long day, and we were tired ourselves, but the promise of a new life kept us going. About two hours before the actual delivery, Nikki asked us to remain out in the waiting room. The pain was more than she bargained for, and she was sore and cranky because she couldn’t have the epidural to block the throbbing. I called Tim every half hour on my cell phone to get an update, or knocked gently at the door. He stuck his head out and informed me of Nikki’s progress each time. It’s amazing that now you can use cell phones in that area of the hospital; certainly not the previous labor and delivery rules. Nikki had a long, arduous labor, but there were no complications, and that was a blessing.

At 7:30 that evening, my cell phone rang as I was approaching Nikki’s room. Tim was calling me with an update. I told Tim I was outside the room and he opened the door. He stood there with Emma in his arms, swaddled in a blanket. The sun could not have shone brighter than the proud, happy look on his face. Moments later Bill joined me and we held Emma when she was just minutes old, experiencing her new world. Nikki was exhausted, but the proud look on her face told the same story as Tim’s.

When I held Emma the first time, I was amazed at her tiny fingers. She was sleeping and her tiny mouth was firmly set. I knew she would never let any of us get away with anything! Bill held her gingerly and tenderly, as if she were an egg ready to break. Nikki was actually Bill’s stepdaughter, but she considered him her father. For the sixteen years we were married, my husband loved her, raised her from her teenage years, and walked her down the aisle on her wedding day. That is why she was so proud to show him what she had accomplished by bringing Emma into his world. And I was proud of both of them.

We watched as the nurses examined Emma and bathed her. While the nurse washed her at the sink, she wailed loudly, and we knew she had good, strong lungs. She was perfect in every way, down to the details of her little toes and her tiny nose. I thanked God for the safe labor and delivery of my daughter and the birth of this precious perfect baby.

We enjoyed our tiny newborn gift from heaven. It’s amazing how a new baby revitalizes the entire family with joy, gratitude, hope, love and pride. Bill and I visited Emma whenever we could and were amazed all over again each time we held her. Instead of giving Emma baby formula in bottles, Nikki nursed her. My heart overflowed with love and amazement whenever I witnessed this bonding of a mother and her nursing infant. Because it was my daughter and my grandchild, flesh of my flesh, the experience sometimes brought tears of love to my eyes.

Since all our family except Nikki lived in Chicago, Tim’s family invited us to their houses for holidays so he and Nikki didn’t have to split their day between the two sets of parents. We always had a wonderful time with them and appreciated their generosity and hospitality. Easter Sunday was no exception. Emma was four weeks old and Nikki dressed her in a pretty pink dress, booties and headband. We all took turns holding her and having our pictures taken. She looked delicate and tiny in the arms of family members. When it was my turn to hold Emma, she wanted to sleep, so I placed her against my shoulder and held her close. I could smell her sweet baby aroma and it warmed my heart. Several times while I held her, I observed my husband looking at me from across the room. He just stared at me with no facial expression, as if he were photographing this moment in his mind. It was unusual, as Bill liked to interact with people and talk about everything. But he was quiet and seemed content to gaze at me holding our precious Emma.

Two and a half weeks later in the evening, I couldn’t figure out where Bill was, since he was always home by that time. I had left several messages on his cell phone, but he didn’t return my calls. Bill operated his own one-person handyman business. I received a call from one of the local hospitals thirty miles away from our house. My husband had fallen off the roof of a one-story house. The doctor said he was in critical condition and to find someone to drive me to the hospital. Frantically, I called Tim and Nikki. They packed up Emma’s baby necessities and drove to my house. We raced thirty miles to the medical center, trying to find the unfamiliar hospital in the darkness. Emma had colic at this point in her new life and she was fussy because her routine was disrupted. Our hearts pounded and the new parents struggled to get all Emma’s things together, as we ran into the hospital lobby. I was panic-stricken because my husband had previous open-heart surgeries from the time he was a child until the last one almost three years ago. He took blood thinners and had a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted the previous year.

The receptionist told us where the intensive care unit was located, and we rushed to the elevator. When the elevator door opened on the second floor, we were outside the ICU. Tim stayed in the waiting room with Emma while Nikki and I went in. We hurried to Bill’s room. Neither of us was prepared for what we observed. Bill lay with his head in a pool of blood in his bed. A ventilator breathed for him and there were drains in his stomach and mouth. Blood poured out of his left ear and his nose. Six bags hung from their respective positions on poles by the side of his bed and delivered drugs intravenously in an extraordinary effort to save his life. Nikki and I broke down and wept. We held his hands as he twitched uncontrollably. Nikki and Tim supported me as I continued my vigil, swapping places in the waiting room where they were attending to Emma.

I didn’t know where to begin to ask questions and to absorb the horror in front of me. Nikki and I sobbed uncontrollably and Tim, who enjoyed a father-son relationship with Bill, cried as well. My husband’s doctors came into his room, one by one, and provided details about Bill’s general condition. Each one gave us an extremely poor prognosis. I told Tim and Nikki to go home that night and take care of Emma and themselves. I stayed in the waiting room and tried to catch short naps on a small hard couch, or I sat by Bill’s bedside, holding his hand and praying. At some point during the night a chaplain came into the room. He prayed and spoke with me for an hour. The long night was filled with many activations of Bill’s implanted defibrillator, due to his heart’s extremely compromised condition. Finally dawn’s light filtered through the window in Bill’s room. Usually, I find the time just before sunrise very inspiring and magical, but daybreak only heightened my sadness and concern for Bill, who lay in a coma before me.

An extremely competent trauma neurosurgeon from the neurological institute close to the hospital attended Bill, and he requested a family meeting that morning. I was impressed by his knowledge of Bill’s situation and his manner of ministering to the patient’s family. We held our meeting in a small cove in the waiting room where Emma was sleeping, so Nikki, Tim and I could be together. The neurosurgeon reiterated the information he had given us when we arrived the evening before: Bill had multiple skull fractures and severe bleeding in his brain. Therefore, he had an extremely poor prognosis for breathing on his own without the ventilator and there was little hope of any cognitive brain function. The fact that Bill took blood thinners for previous heart conditions contributed to the excessive blood loss. Although a neighbor heard the ladder crash to the ground and called emergency services immediately, Bill had already experienced severe head trauma and hemorrhaging in his brain. After the doctor left, the three of us talked and sobbed and made the decision to let Bill go to his heavenly reward. My husband and I had intense feelings about permanently existing in a vegetative, irreversible coma and promised each other that we wouldn’t keep each other alive if that were the case. We had strong living wills that spelled out each condition that would prompt a life-ending decision.

With sorrow-filled hearts and many tears, we told the neurosurgeon that we wished to disconnect life support for Bill. After all the devices except the ventilator were removed, Nikki and I prayed by his bedside. When the ventilator was removed, Bill breathed on his own for nine minutes while Nikki and I held his hands and patted his face and then he was peaceful. Nikki lingered a few moments and then left so I could be alone with my husband for the last time. I pulled the sheet off him and kissed and caressed his body. I remembered that he always had a smile and good word for each person he met, whether he agreed with them or not. He always gave people the benefit of the doubt.

“I can’t live without you, I cried. I asked him, “Why did you leave me so soon and so suddenly?”

I was so distraught that I couldn’t talk to the police officer who investigated this accidental death. The medical examiner later ruled that death was accidental and caused by falling off the roof and incurring severe head trauma. I was fortunate that the coroner’s office honored my request not to do an internal autopsy. The bleeding was evident in all the CT scans as well as in Bill’s hospital bed. He had endured several heart surgeries in his lifetime and I didn’t want them to cut him open again after he was deceased.

As we left that evening, Nikki, Tim and I wondered what was in the future for all of us. I just wondered if I could live through this latest heartache. Almost three years ago my youngest brother in Chicago died from a thoracic aortic aneurysm that dissected in the emergency room. We had to take him off life support as well. Bill had the same ailment; along with a heart attack, three months after my brother incurred his fatal condition and that prompted his last open-heart surgery.

Twenty years before, my previous husband used a snow blower to clear our driveway in Chicago and then our next door neighbor’s. We found him dead on the neighbor’s driveway of a massive coronary attack. He was not quite 45 years old. I remembered the shock, pain, and denial I experienced then and wondered if I could live beyond these moments now in any meaningful way. I remembered my nervous breakdown when my former husband died. I know Nikki was concerned about the same thing, even as she was managing her own grief and learning to be a parent for the first time. It was a trying time for all of us. Nikki and Emma caught bad colds and sinus infections with bronchitis. The tragedy of Bill’s death was compounded by an ailing six-and-a-half week old infant and her mother. Nikki was nursing so we couldn’t really help her except to change Emma’s diapers and rock her to sleep because of her colic and illness.

My other three daughters came in from Chicago to pay their respects to their beloved step-father. My husband was so proud of “his girls”. The grandchildren in Chicago comprehended this tragedy, and they were devastated they could not come as well, but the last-minute airfare was too expensive. Bill’s brother and sister arrived. Baby Emma looked down at Bill in his casket: the grandpa who welcomed her into the world such a short time ago. At his service, we remembered Bill as a devoted husband, a beloved father and grandpa, a hard worker with strong work ethics and an avid guitar player who loved music of any kind. Many people came to pay their respects: our friends, my coworkers and his handyman customers. Over and over I heard words like “honest, ethical, happy, smiling, loved to talk, smart.” After the service, my friend released doves outside the chapel. I held the last one until the others were flying in a circle above us, and then I released the last dove.

Bill and I planned on cremation after our passing. Several times in the last year, Bill asked me if he died before me, if I would “keep him around” until I was ready to leave. Then our daughters would release our ashes together into the ocean surrounded by beautiful cliffs. Bill was not an overtly emotional person so I remembered this “request”. Since I never knew if he was serious or not, I ordered a double urn with both our names engraved on it along with our wedding date. Bill’s ashes remain in our bedroom closet and sometimes I go in there and talk to him.

I recognize the only too familiar symptoms of the shocking sudden death of someone close to you: crying yourself to sleep; waking up crying in the morning; a huge knot in the pit of your stomach, the shaking and coldness; faint feelings; no appetite; no interest in anything around you; not wanting to talk to anyone; the aloneness; waiting for the darkness so you can escape into sleep; sudden impact in your abdomen when you touch his clothing or hear a favorite song; not wanting to cook for yourself; deep sorrow all the way down to your feet; memories that come unbidden to haunt you and remind you of your loneliness; anger at being left alone; emptiness when you see his “spaces” in the house: his work van, workbench; going on a planned vacation with the kids and lodging alone where you always stayed together; going to someone’s house by yourself; refusing offers of help and comfort; alone in your bed; only your stuff in the bathroom; watching television alone or doing any other favorite activity that you used to do together; anger at God for taking your loved one; anger at your loved one for leaving, especially without saying goodbye; overwhelming sorrow that squeezes your heart until you feel it won’t beat anymore.

“Why am I still alive when the meaning of my life is gone,” I ask myself. I cry out to Bill, “You promised you wouldn’t leave me. Why did you go so soon? We looked forward to retiring soon, and now you won’t be here to share it with me.”

He was my light, my shining star, my harbor, my safety net, my stabilizer, the reason I got up in the morning. What on earth am I going to do now? It’s so lonely in our house by myself. Weekends are the worst because we used to spend all our time together doing projects around the house, going to our beloved Phoenix Zoo, cheering for Elliott Sadler in the NASCAR races or watching Jake Plummer and the Denver Broncos play football, visiting the casinos in Laughlin, Nevada, departing on a cruise. I try to do these things alone, but it causes a certain level of anxiety. My one bright spot is the fact we never waited to do the things we liked until retirement. Because of Bill’s heart conditions, I planned trips and events several times per year. I keep thinking that maybe this is a huge test, and if I pass, Bill will come walking through the door again. I know that this won’t really happen as I look at the reality of my situation: I see the double urn containing his ashes and my hopeful fantasy disappears, along with my hoped-for future.

I can always tell what kind of a day it will be when I wake up in the morning. If I awaken and think of Bill and begin to cry, it will be a difficult day. If I wake up, see the sunshine streaming through the shutters, and think of Bill and remember some beautiful or funny memory, it will be “doable.”

On the difficult days, my daughter brings baby Emma to see me or I visit them. When I see this precious child, I remember how her Grandpa Bill and I waited eagerly in the hospital to meet her. Bill was present at her birth and she was present when he died. He waited for her at her birth and she waited for him at his death.

Birth and death are part of the same human cycle, and each of us must undergo the complete process. Somehow I have to reconcile the dichotomy of Emma’s birth and Bill’s death because they are intrinsically related. This realization will not bring my husband back to me, and it will not lessen my grief and feelings of despair, but it is a rational enlightenment that grounds me in the present. I am not dead; I am alive. Emma is alive; Nikki and Tim are alive; my other children and grandchildren are alive. My world teems with life I have to recognize. I must stay among the living and contribute to the humanity around me.

My objective must evolve from wanting to be with Bill in death to fostering and continuing the gifts of generosity, honesty, compassion and love that my husband left me, and in doing so, commemorate his memory. I think back to the words I chose for Bill’s memorial cards: “Miss me, but not too long.” This message spoke to me because I know that is what my husband desired: we should miss him, grieve him, but go forth into our living world with new awareness of the preciousness of each of us, and of life itself. Now I must find ways to do this in his memory and for myself since I am among the living, along with our precious granddaughter, Emma.