Jump or Get Pushed

I fell off a cliff when I was fourteen years old.

I've been thinking about this date for months now...How will it be? How will I be? How can it be? Can I still be...?

But I find myself never organizing a memorial or ceremony or anything to symbolize the most life-changing event in my life, my family's life. My gardienne tells me, "Oh, you mustn't think of it as the anniversary of his illness" How can I not? It's the day my healthy son died, my whole son died, and came back forever changed. No, he did not die (thanks to your fasts & prayers & mine, and Dear God's will), but parts of him did. Parts of me did. Part of my happiness did. My naivete did. I want to celebrate & cry & scream all at the same time. How can I give it the justice it deserves? February 20th is etched in my soul as the day I should have taken my son to the ER, but why would I? He just had a fever. I should have insisted on a spinal tap, though no one would even think to do it then. But what if I had? Then all of the ensuing events that followed may have played out differently. I could tell you these events minute-by-minute, word-for-word. I have played and re-played them in my mind a thousand times since. How could I have known? How could I have reacted differently? How could I have prevented this? And why didn't I? How did my loving God allow this to happen to my perfect, beautiful baby boy? It's monumental. Happy Anniversary. I say it with sincere, heart-felt joy coupled with gaping, profound sadness.

And so I realize the weekend is full of activities I don't really want to participate in. Nothing monumental or terrible, just regular-day-to-day obligations that I feel sort of pushed into, and I'm dragging my feet.

Why? Because I want to be in a very quiet place. MY very quiet, very holy, very solace, reverent place. I want to meditate on how my stars became aligned or 2 planets crashed together or the Gods made this thing happen to me, my son, to us. And what is the bigger meaning in it all? What am I to take from it? What have I learned from it? Maybe more importantly, What have I NOT learned from it?

I want to walk with those angels again, see them holding my baby son, feel the peace I felt there, next to my son's lifeless body for days last February and March.

It's weighing heavily on me. So much so that I nearly burst into tears twice today, hyperventilating, walking the streets of Paris, with my babies in push chairs...and then was saved, distracted by a friend who'd come up behind me or a child calling my name, asking for something, begging me back to reality. This reality. Not my alternate, perfect-before reality.

I am somber. I feel like I am in a rainy desert, a sad tourist, a confused professor...2 opposites, 2 things that do not mesh. I am happy, too. SO thankful.

I eat apples & peanut butter (I haven't eaten them for a year, likely) standing in the kitchen, feeling my earache or toothache or recently diagnosed TMJ, reflecting on the irony that, while looking at the spinach lasagna I forced the kids to eat for dinner tonight, I couldn't stomach one spoonful.

My stomach is in knots, I cry, I want to scream, I want to run forever into the sunset, then wish to retreat, find a really good yoga pose, or maybe a fluffy, comfy bed or something strikingly spiritually enlightening, something so very satisfying. And be there.

The house is quiet. The kids are quiet, and yet I am not quiet inside. I am raging, tossing, turning inside.

I feel sorrow, pain, anguish, mostly anxiety about PJ's EEG tomorrow morning.

More what ifs, more exams, more tubes & electrodes & wires & cords & registering & more holding my growing toddler to my chest, and more praying. More tears, from him and me. Removing his "hearing" to put him in a confused, isolated world, forcing him to sleep, forcing him to wake up, forcing him to do physical therapy. "But he is still not walking?", I fear they will ask. "Don't tell me of his progress, Madame, I want to be surprised" Me, too, I think to myself. Me, too.

Anti-epileptic drugs have been explained to us as being assistants in pulling Parker's brain away from the cliff, if the cliff represents the seizure. The cliff is still there, it may go away, it may not, but in the meantime, we walk along the side of the cliff. Every single day. I still carry valium in my purse in case he has a full blown seizure which he has not done since February 21st last year. We give him 5 doses of anti-epileptics every single day. We've completely weaned him for over a month from the urgent anti-epileptic and this EEG will show us his brain activity without this vital drug.

Parker has not had any seizures for 3 months, since mid-November. Visible seizures, I mean. Who knows what is going on inside of that brain of his.

I used to consider myself a risk-taker. I jumped off cliffs into Lake Powell or the Colorado River for the thrill of it when I was a teenager. But now, I'm not sure I'd still jump. I'm just not sure anymore. I hate to say that. I hate to be that.

He is my prisoner this time, in my arms. My deaf prisoner at the EEG. I rejoice in his rebellion, his strength, his mind being willing and able to command his arms and the fine muscles in his hands to attempt removal of these obtrusions and his legs to flail in mutiny, his voice to screech in agony. Agony that can only be reproduced so gloriously by a healthy toddler.

I like jumpers. They are exciting, fun-loving, free. Not side-liners, watching the game. They play the game. They live life. I want to play. I hate riding the bench. I want to jump. But I don't. Yet, I don't want to be pushed. There is a difference. A significant difference between jumping of your own will and being pushed.

When I was about 9 years old, I was pushed off a high dive at a summer camp. I was mostly ok, luckily. My foot actually hit the pavement, but the rest of me landed rather safely in the water. I was stunned.

I was skiing with some girlfriends. We were scheduled to rendez-vous with my mom in the parking lot at 4 pm. We had about 20 minutes before we would be considered late. We didn't often ski this mountain, and decided to ski the bottom half rather than ride the tram back down. I was exhilirated by the signs that read, "Experts only". I told them it was an exaggeration, and we'd better get going. Before I knew it, my fourteen year old friends and I were too far committed to go back, to hike back up the hill and take the easy way down. Before I knew it I found myself alone, going fast, I mean really, icy, shaded-mountain-end-of-day fast. The path narrowed to the width of my skis tightly together. On one side of me was a high, hard, icy bank of snow lining the path, on the other was a cliff, with a 200 foot drop off. Without even having time to think, I abruptly turned into the icy bank. The force of the turn and perhaps hitting the icy bank actually propelled me backwards over the cliff, back first. I remember falling. I remember thinking I was on my way to death. I remember thinking, "So this is what it feels like". I fell only about 15 or 20 feet before I felt a big thud on my upper left thigh. I stopped. Abruptly. I had hit a tree. But this tree appeared out of no where. I looked on either side of me and saw nothing but drop. Nothing but a long way down. I remember feeling it was not my choice to turn when I did. It was another force outside myself that made me turn, that made me fall over the cliff when I did. I was perfectly fine, shaken up, but fine. I carefully took off my skis & scaled back up the mountain in just enough time for a ski patrol man to come by on snow mobile and ask if I was "Renee?" and if I was "ok?"Apparently they were already looking for me. I was not afraid. Did I jump in my subconscious, or get pushed by outside forces?

I guess I am asking the question if I am being pushed or if I am jumping into this weekend, or turning into an icy bank, this EEG, this future. I am definitely not feeling like jumping. When you jump, you are sure of yourself, you are sure of your risk, you are sure of the outcome, or you gladly accept the consequences with some sense of surety. When you are pushed: you are clumsy, imprecise. The risk for error seems huge and ensuing.

I've been thinking of the year anniversary with much hesitation, much weariness, much trepidation. I don't want to over-dramatize it, but it is significant.

A year ago, the choices I made changed my life, Parker's life, all of our lives significantly FOREVER.

This I mean not in the good way, the adrenaline you feel during or following a jump, but in a hesitant, bad way like when you are pushed off the high dive because you've been up there too long that some kid decides he's tired of waiting & makes the decision for you.

Right now I just don't feel like jumping. I am being pushed. From all angles I feel hazy fog and heavy, muddy hands holding me in the fog, pushing me where I don't want to go.

We were on a train recently, me and John. We happened to be sitting in the seats that face backwards. As we slowly departed the station, we watched the scenery pass us by in reverse. It felt odd, strange, like we were rewinding part of our life in a movie. I asked John if he'd do it. "Do what?", he said. "Rewind it. Go back. Play it all again, only change it, make it better." Without hesitation, he shook his head & said, "No." This is why I love this man. He stands firm. Not me, I am a jumper or a push-ee. He takes what is given to him. He walks along the side of the cliff with sure footing. He knows it is for our own good, our learning, our growth. I heard him tell the Director of the deaf school we visited on Monday that he didn't believe things happened by chance anymore.

All week long I kept seeing a note I had written to myself (I don't even remember when): "Think of a trial as an invitation to grow"... Now I think of it as an invitation to jump. In a good way. And hope I can fly, Parker can fly, that we can all fly through this weekend. And beyond.

Other things on my mind

Parker is great. He is a little boy who has some challenges and has been through a lot but these past couple of weeks he has been more just a little boy.

He is increasingly steady on his feet and he is very happy to hold both my hands and walk down down the long red-carpeted hallway in our apartment. I have learned it is better that I walk backwards with him coming toward me. If I walk behind him he throws his head to the rear with an arched back so that he can see me and he laughs deeply at my upside-down appearance.

His speech and hearing seem to be progressing as well. While he had mainly focused on vowels for the past several months, he has now started with some consonants. Notably he seems to be trying to pronounce his name as he will often be heard saying "aka". He also appears to be using a couple of new signs including one similar to mother where he puts his index finger to his chin. The actual sign is to take your open hand with your fingers spread wide and place the thumb on your chin but it is a start.

He is an incredibly curious boy whose favorite recent hobby seems to be removing all items from any shelf, drawer or other receptacle that he encounters. His sisters have decided that they don't appreciate this and try and lock him out of their rooms and we have had to better manage bookshelves with low-hanging articles closely.

He is a very healthy eater and follows closely after his sister, Axelle, and his father in terms of meat consumption. He continues to smack his lips happily and click his tongue to show that he appreciates his meals.

He is completely weaned of Urbanyl and we are going in for an EEG soon to see if there continue to be signs of cerebral instability but so far no visible signs have presented.

Renee asked me yesterday when I started to feel that things were "ok". I felt they were ok around Christmas, she started feeling that in the last week. Not to say things don't remain in terms of logistical challenges and everything is perfect, it just feels more manageable and somehow peaceful like there are other priorities that could be more important for us right now. It is a good feeling.

One thing that has pre-occupied us recently is the devastation in Haiti. Renee touched briefly on this in a previous blog but it is something that has effected me fairly deeply and is difficult to transmit fully the level of concern I have. I was 19 when I went to Haiti; part of the semi-obligatory missionary service required in our church and some of the most formative years in my life. At 19 you are naively self-confident. As a 19-year-old missionary for God you are invincible.

While I was slated to spend nearly two years there, due to political instability, I was in the country for less than 4 months.

Access to drinking water was never easy. When the water would come we would fill up our buckets and our water basin for when it did not. We had the luxury of having the water come directly to our home. Most Haitians would walk a mile up the street to the nearest water pipe and fill their buckets up and walk them home. Even this water was not safe to drink. The Haitians had built up a tolerance to the different bacteria in the water. We would chemically treat our water which the Haitians affectionately called "Clorox Juice".

Food was scarce for everyone. In the provinces they at least had access to natural agriculture and produce, Port-au-Prince has always struggled to feed the people there. I was stationed for the majority of my time in Haiti, near the tip of the south peninsula in the town of Jérémie. There, regardless of the amount of money you had, you could not buy anything. As missionaries we had about 100$/month to live on for food which also needed to cover the cost of 15$ a piece that we paid the maid who washed our clothes and cooked for us three days a week. Even with that I had 50$ a month to spare as there was simply nothing to buy.

Garbage and sanitation facilities were virtually non-existent and sewage flowed openly into the water systems and out to the sea. The water off the shore of every major coastline city was light brown for several miles out.

The roads are virtually unpaved and where they are paved they have sinkholes which make them useless. To travel the roughly 100 miles from Port-au-Prince to Jérémie would take almost 12 hours and required a 4x4 vehicle. Heavy machinery was virtually non-existent and even if it did exist I am not sure the roads would support it and most construction was done by wheelbarrow. For buildings that had fallen into disrepair or been damaged due to poor workmanship, they were left to crumble to the ground.

Political instability and corruption are the harsh daily reality. In 1991 Aristide was ousted by Raoul Cedras. Both were incapable of governing. I remember one man who explained to me what the difference between Haiti and the US was and why Haiti did not prosper. He took a US penny from his pocket (which was commonly used as a form of currency). He asked me to read the inscription. In God We Trust. In Haiti, he said, the government is not patient enough for God, they trust in other, darker things.

With the overthrow of Aristide I was evacuated from Jérémie to Port-au-Prince. When we left Jérémie I wore three pairs of underclothes, two pairs of socks, two shirts and a pair of pants as most of the rest of our clothes and belongings we had to leave behind because of weight restrictions for the small eight-seater airplane we took out of there. Jérémie has many memories for me, the kind that burn into your soul; born of intense fear and injustice followed by miraculous redemption. The kind I share sparingly if at all.

After Jérémie I spent one week in bed with dengue fever in Petionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. At the end of that week half of the missionaries were evacuated to other countries and states in the US; this group included all missionaries that were in my training group except for me.

The rest of us were re-deployed in areas around the capital. I was sent to the outskirts of Port-au-Prince in an area called Martissant. I was assigned a native Haitian missionary as a companion who was just starting his mission. Each day I rode the makeshift bus/taxi into the center passing the remains of our church's Martissant chapel. It had been ransacked and set on fire 9 months earlier when Aristide was elected and the church decided to meet elsewhere and not rebuild to avoid possible contention. It was a stark, visible reminder of instability.

At night there was a curfew at sundown and you could hear the military police patrolling the streets. One night we awoke to people yelling followed by automatic gunfire in front of our house. This was not the first time I heard gunfire in Haiti but it was never that close.

We evacuated Port-au-Prince one week after my arrival in Martissant. We were told two nights before to pack our things and then we flew to Miami via Puerto Rico. I was the youngest of the remaining 24 foreign missionaries. Despite the conditions, the violence, the poverty, I wept heavily when I left the country late in October 1991, most of us did. For several months we thought we would go back in once things calmed down but the rest of my 18 months as a missionary I spent in various Creole-speaking areas of south Florida and the Bahamas.

Haiti was a heart-breaking disaster before the earthquake, I can't fathom what it is like now.

I felt robbed of my time in Haiti. I felt I had earned something more adventurous and that I would learn more in Haiti than in safe, civilized Florida. As it turned out, I learned different, harder things, things that do not come from physical deprivation. I realize in retrospect and with current events in perspective that disappointment is a powerful tool in making stronger people.

In the past several weeks I sought out several ways to get to Haiti. I was already booked for a long-planned conference to Miami and I thought that it was fate that I could take a flight from there to join up with a group in Haiti and pitch in where I could. Although I don't have disaster related or medical skills, I thought that a knowledge of the people, country and language and a desire to help would be qualification enough. I could not seem to get the right audience to listen to me and with no commercial flights going into Haiti logistically I could not work out the challenges. Last Sunday I was driving around the Little Haiti area of Miami secretly hoping that I would find someone there who was leading up a task force to the country and would let me join. None of this materialized.

In those dark days with Parker I was reminded of my time in Haiti and that these types of trials seem to crop up every couple of years or so for me. There is obviously something I am not getting right from these experiences as I seem to need these reminders. While it seems that Haiti is not something I will be a part of right now, one of my former missionary companions suggested to me that given what is on our plate already this year, maybe it is ok to let someone else do the heavy lifting this time. Haiti will have problems for many years to come; I will have a chance to go back and help again at sometime. I suppose that is ok for now.
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/churchupdate/100202church.html
http://utahhospitaltaskforce.blogspot.com/