June 2, 2006
Remembering---
Yesterday, June 1, 2006, was the eighth anniversary of our son's death. Joshua William Eaton was just six weeks shy of his ninth birthday when he suddenly and unexpectedly died.
He began having fainting spells when he was about six, the first of which occurred in a swimming pool in Tallahassee. We took him to an emergency room there, but the result was a foreteller of all the times to come when the docs examined him and couldn't find anything really wrong except a slightly irregularly heartbeat.
Over the next two years he was under the care of two good docs, a Dr. Greenside who is a pediatric heart specilaist and a pediatric neurologist who's name escapes me at the moment. They ran about every test they could think up during those two years, including the sleep deprivation thing when he had a fainting spell. We would keep him up until midnight and then wake him up at 4 a.m., then take him to the hospital for tests at 8 a.m. Never once did they find anything wrong except for the heart beat which they said was not life threatening.
Once Dr. Greenside had us take him to a doc friend of his at Children's Hospital in Denver. This doc was a highly rated specialist in arrythmia, and he put Josh through all kinds of things on the catheter table for five hours, including injecting enough chemicals to get his heart beating at 300 beats a minute. (I didn't know a heart could beat that fast.) After these tests he came out and told us we had a normal little boy with a funny heartbeat and we should take him on home.
We thought we were home free, but we decided to take him back to the neurologist with these test results. He told us it wasn't life threatening, that he had seen it before many times, and he would just prescribe some medication which Josh would take until he was a teenager, then he would take Josh off the medication and he would be perfectly normal.
That was in March 1998 and Josh died the following June i. Shortly after dinner I was sitting at the computer when Josh appeared by my side and said, "Dad, I would like to get on the computer, but I'll be glad to wait until you are through". I was impressed with his sensitivity and gave him a hug and told him I wouldn't be long, that I had to mow the lawn. Little did I know that would be the last conversation I would ever have with him.
I cranked up the riding mower and mowed our very large lawn, then drove the tractor around the house toward the garage door to park it, when I saw Josh lying on the concrete pad under the basketball. He wasn't moving, and I ran into the house and yelled for my wife to call 911. A lady friend was visiting so she called 911 while my wife ran out to give Josh artificial respiration. Fortunately, during every fainting spell Josh had had during the two years, my wife, Dee Dee, was with him every time - a real blessing. She worked over him until the paramedics arrived, barely five minutes, and she stepped away crying softly to God not to take our son away. I could only hold her and pray with her.
It was pretty obvious the paramedics weren't going to bring him around, and the next thing we knew the Flight for Life helicopter was landing in our cul-de-sac to take Josh to the hospital. They didn't have room on the chopper for us, so we drove to the hospital. When we arrived about half an hour later, they quickly ushered us into the room where they were working over Josh. Our Executive Minister, Rev. Jim Smith, was already there, and we had barely sat down when he and the doc came over and Jim said, "he's gone to be with the Lord". We looked at his lifeless body, only covered by a sheet, and disbelief began to turn into numbness which I think is God's way of keeping your head and heart from exploding in a situation like that.
The nurse asked Dee Dee if she wanted to hold him, so Dee Dee sat down in a rocking chair and they lay our baby boy, wrapped in swaddling clothes, in her lap. As she rocked him, Dee Dee, Jim Smith and I sang "Jesus loves me" to what remained of eight years of our life. After a while, we kissed his face and they left the room with his body. A lady who was a hospital employee and the epitome of grace had the difficult job of asking us about the possibility of harvesting some of Josh's organs so they could be donated to other people. We readily agreed and later found out one of his corneas went to a child in Denver and another to a person in New Orleans. I don't believe there could be a more challenging job than this lady's position at the hospital, and she actually was a comfort to us. God bless her.
We went out into the waiting room where about twenty or so people from our Sunday School class had gathered to pray. I had never experienced the love and compassion so freely given to us by these dear friends. I think it kept our heart from completely breaking into as we sobbed, first on one shoulder then another.
Ed and Sally Ward took us home to spend the night at their house, and another good friend, Miles Boardman, took our car to Ed's house. For the next week these dear friends took over our house and our lives when we were so numb we couldn't function. We couldn't have survived without them.
Jan Lehman, from the Pastoral Care office of our church, came to our house the next day, Tuesday, to help us plan
the services, and we were surprised when she suggested we first go to the cemetery, then have the memorial service, then have a reception. The suggestion of a reception stunned us, but she eventually convinced us it was appropriate so that our friends and Josh's friends could address his loss with us that day so they wouldn't be uncomfortable when they met us later on. She was exactly right.
On June 5 we gathered at Josh' gravesite. It was cold and snowy - typical Colorado weather even in June - and some of the visitors who had come from warmer climes were wearing borrowed ski parkas. Rev. John Stevens, our Senior Minister, had just the right words, then we went to our church, First Pres, in Colorado Springs for a beautiful memorial service. Dee Dee and I sat in front, numbed by the wonderful cocoon the Lord had provided, then we adjourned to the social hall for the reception.
The next two hours were nothing short of a miracle. Dee Dee and I stood at the head of the reception line which ran all the way out of the Education building into the alley way behind. We shook hands of friends for almost two hours, and i will guarantee you we were getting our strength, physical and emotional, from the Holy Spirit. There was no way we could have done it on our own.
One little girl from Josh's Sunday School Class came up to me in line. I kneeled down and she handed me a small soccer ball which she said she and Josh had played with and she wanted me to have it. This was as close as i came to breaking down at the reception, but I pulled myself together, gave her a hug and thanked her. We still have the ball. She knew Josh liked playing soccer.
There were a lot of kids at the reception, and Jan Lehman, bless her heart, had figured out a way to help these kids deal with the loss of a friend. After all, when you are eight years old you aren't supposed to have your friends die. About an hour into the reception, we all went outside and the kids were all given helium-filled balloons. They sang happy kids song and then released the balloons, which jan said was sort of like giving Josh one last present up there in the sky and releasing him to go to the next place. Instead of a somber time, this event provided a sense of relief and even happiness for the kids. I would recommend it to anyone in the same situation.
The inevitable then happened over the next week. Our out-of-town friends left to go back to their lives as did our in-town friends. The numbness began to be peeled away like a onion, and our raw nerves were exposed more and more to this new life without our dear little Josh. I have been a Christian all my adult life, taught Sunday School for over twenty-five years and even was a Certified Lay Preacher in the Virginia Methodist Conference. But I confess this new life felt like someone had gone back into the Holy of Holies and hung the curtain back up. I was in a spiritual dry spell like no other I had ever experience. I wasn't so much mad at God as I was puzzled at why he took this beautiful little boy home before he had aq chance to live a long and fruitful life.
As time went on, Dee Dee and I knew we needed some counseling, that we couldn't get over this hurt by ourselves. We started seeing a grief counselor, Dee Martz, weekly, and we attended a grief workshop at church for eight Monday nights. Through Dee and the workshop we came readily to the conclusion we had to make a decision either to let grief rob us of the rest of our lives or we had the option of doing something positive with the grief.
At a time like this, I believe God allows our faith to be tested. I had to ask myself - "ok, big guy, do you really believe all that 'stuff' you have been telling the people all these years or not?". My faith, stronger than I could ever realize, led me to believe that all this was part of God's perfect plan. I admit I still don't think much of the part of the plan where Josh dies, but I do have the faith that I'll understand why it happened someday. Right now, God is not in the "why" business, and we just have to have the faith that He is in control and has nothing but best wishes for our lives.
I won't presume to give Dee Dee's version of this period because she is in a very different situation than me. I have three grown children by an earlier marriage, but Josh was Dee Dee's only child. She lost her complete identity as a mom, cub scout leader, soccer mom, baseball mom, room mother, etc. all in one feel swoop. Her approach to grief was to a large extent much different than mine. For instance, months later when we finally got the autopsy report back in the mail, I opened it, read the first three lines, which rekindled my anger at a coroner which I already felt was stupid, and I threw the letter down on the kitchen counter. Dee Dee, who has a civil engineering degree from Georgia Tech, and thinks like an engineer at times, picked the letter up and read every line. One important thing we learned in the grief workshop is that men and women grieve differently and each MUST respect the way the other grieves. The divorce rate for couples who lose a child approaches 80%, so this respect is vital to not losing a second relationship.
We made a positive decision to do what we could to help other parents in our situation, and one of the things we have done is to work in the grief workshop about six times as small group leaders for parents who have lost children. When the participants realize you have experienced their pain, it goes a long way in helping them listen to the work shop material.
I also have written a number of newspaper articles about losing a child for the Denver Post and the Colorado Springs Gazette and one magazine article for ParentsMagazine. We like to believe sharing what we learned about handling grief will help others get on with their lives, which, we know, will never be the same.
Josh will be seventeen (we always speak of him in the present tense since we know he's in a better place and we will have a great reunion with him someday) on July 14. His best friend, Garrett, lives not far away and has grown into a fine young man and a good baseball player. We look at Garrett and wonder if Josh would physically be close to Garrett's size. Josh would be driving, probably have a girl friend and we would be thinking about a college for him.
So now, eight years later, do we miss him? You bet. A day doesn't go by we don't think of him. The pain has eased for the most part, but the only way it could go away completely would be for us to give up all memories of josh, and we aren't willing to do that. And we have happy memories as well as sad ones. We are grateful we had him for eight years, and we feel blessed by my other three children who are on their own and are good citizens. One has even provided us with twin grandsons now six years old, and they help fill some of the lonliness we feel about Josh.
I want to leave you with this thought. There is hope even after losing a loved one, whether a child, a spouse, a sibling or a parent. Of course, life will never be the same, but the person you have lost would never want you to let grief rule the rest of your life. Don't bury the grief for if you do it will surely come back to bite you later in life. Face grief head on, as hard as that may be, work you way through it and let God show you the wonderful things He has planned for the rest of your life. You have much to offer this world we live in.
Copyright Hugh M. Eaton, Jr. June 2006
Remembering---
Yesterday, June 1, 2006, was the eighth anniversary of our son's death. Joshua William Eaton was just six weeks shy of his ninth birthday when he suddenly and unexpectedly died.
He began having fainting spells when he was about six, the first of which occurred in a swimming pool in Tallahassee. We took him to an emergency room there, but the result was a foreteller of all the times to come when the docs examined him and couldn't find anything really wrong except a slightly irregularly heartbeat.
Over the next two years he was under the care of two good docs, a Dr. Greenside who is a pediatric heart specilaist and a pediatric neurologist who's name escapes me at the moment. They ran about every test they could think up during those two years, including the sleep deprivation thing when he had a fainting spell. We would keep him up until midnight and then wake him up at 4 a.m., then take him to the hospital for tests at 8 a.m. Never once did they find anything wrong except for the heart beat which they said was not life threatening.
Once Dr. Greenside had us take him to a doc friend of his at Children's Hospital in Denver. This doc was a highly rated specialist in arrythmia, and he put Josh through all kinds of things on the catheter table for five hours, including injecting enough chemicals to get his heart beating at 300 beats a minute. (I didn't know a heart could beat that fast.) After these tests he came out and told us we had a normal little boy with a funny heartbeat and we should take him on home.
We thought we were home free, but we decided to take him back to the neurologist with these test results. He told us it wasn't life threatening, that he had seen it before many times, and he would just prescribe some medication which Josh would take until he was a teenager, then he would take Josh off the medication and he would be perfectly normal.
That was in March 1998 and Josh died the following June i. Shortly after dinner I was sitting at the computer when Josh appeared by my side and said, "Dad, I would like to get on the computer, but I'll be glad to wait until you are through". I was impressed with his sensitivity and gave him a hug and told him I wouldn't be long, that I had to mow the lawn. Little did I know that would be the last conversation I would ever have with him.
I cranked up the riding mower and mowed our very large lawn, then drove the tractor around the house toward the garage door to park it, when I saw Josh lying on the concrete pad under the basketball. He wasn't moving, and I ran into the house and yelled for my wife to call 911. A lady friend was visiting so she called 911 while my wife ran out to give Josh artificial respiration. Fortunately, during every fainting spell Josh had had during the two years, my wife, Dee Dee, was with him every time - a real blessing. She worked over him until the paramedics arrived, barely five minutes, and she stepped away crying softly to God not to take our son away. I could only hold her and pray with her.
It was pretty obvious the paramedics weren't going to bring him around, and the next thing we knew the Flight for Life helicopter was landing in our cul-de-sac to take Josh to the hospital. They didn't have room on the chopper for us, so we drove to the hospital. When we arrived about half an hour later, they quickly ushered us into the room where they were working over Josh. Our Executive Minister, Rev. Jim Smith, was already there, and we had barely sat down when he and the doc came over and Jim said, "he's gone to be with the Lord". We looked at his lifeless body, only covered by a sheet, and disbelief began to turn into numbness which I think is God's way of keeping your head and heart from exploding in a situation like that.
The nurse asked Dee Dee if she wanted to hold him, so Dee Dee sat down in a rocking chair and they lay our baby boy, wrapped in swaddling clothes, in her lap. As she rocked him, Dee Dee, Jim Smith and I sang "Jesus loves me" to what remained of eight years of our life. After a while, we kissed his face and they left the room with his body. A lady who was a hospital employee and the epitome of grace had the difficult job of asking us about the possibility of harvesting some of Josh's organs so they could be donated to other people. We readily agreed and later found out one of his corneas went to a child in Denver and another to a person in New Orleans. I don't believe there could be a more challenging job than this lady's position at the hospital, and she actually was a comfort to us. God bless her.
We went out into the waiting room where about twenty or so people from our Sunday School class had gathered to pray. I had never experienced the love and compassion so freely given to us by these dear friends. I think it kept our heart from completely breaking into as we sobbed, first on one shoulder then another.
Ed and Sally Ward took us home to spend the night at their house, and another good friend, Miles Boardman, took our car to Ed's house. For the next week these dear friends took over our house and our lives when we were so numb we couldn't function. We couldn't have survived without them.
Jan Lehman, from the Pastoral Care office of our church, came to our house the next day, Tuesday, to help us plan
the services, and we were surprised when she suggested we first go to the cemetery, then have the memorial service, then have a reception. The suggestion of a reception stunned us, but she eventually convinced us it was appropriate so that our friends and Josh's friends could address his loss with us that day so they wouldn't be uncomfortable when they met us later on. She was exactly right.
On June 5 we gathered at Josh' gravesite. It was cold and snowy - typical Colorado weather even in June - and some of the visitors who had come from warmer climes were wearing borrowed ski parkas. Rev. John Stevens, our Senior Minister, had just the right words, then we went to our church, First Pres, in Colorado Springs for a beautiful memorial service. Dee Dee and I sat in front, numbed by the wonderful cocoon the Lord had provided, then we adjourned to the social hall for the reception.
The next two hours were nothing short of a miracle. Dee Dee and I stood at the head of the reception line which ran all the way out of the Education building into the alley way behind. We shook hands of friends for almost two hours, and i will guarantee you we were getting our strength, physical and emotional, from the Holy Spirit. There was no way we could have done it on our own.
One little girl from Josh's Sunday School Class came up to me in line. I kneeled down and she handed me a small soccer ball which she said she and Josh had played with and she wanted me to have it. This was as close as i came to breaking down at the reception, but I pulled myself together, gave her a hug and thanked her. We still have the ball. She knew Josh liked playing soccer.
There were a lot of kids at the reception, and Jan Lehman, bless her heart, had figured out a way to help these kids deal with the loss of a friend. After all, when you are eight years old you aren't supposed to have your friends die. About an hour into the reception, we all went outside and the kids were all given helium-filled balloons. They sang happy kids song and then released the balloons, which jan said was sort of like giving Josh one last present up there in the sky and releasing him to go to the next place. Instead of a somber time, this event provided a sense of relief and even happiness for the kids. I would recommend it to anyone in the same situation.
The inevitable then happened over the next week. Our out-of-town friends left to go back to their lives as did our in-town friends. The numbness began to be peeled away like a onion, and our raw nerves were exposed more and more to this new life without our dear little Josh. I have been a Christian all my adult life, taught Sunday School for over twenty-five years and even was a Certified Lay Preacher in the Virginia Methodist Conference. But I confess this new life felt like someone had gone back into the Holy of Holies and hung the curtain back up. I was in a spiritual dry spell like no other I had ever experience. I wasn't so much mad at God as I was puzzled at why he took this beautiful little boy home before he had aq chance to live a long and fruitful life.
As time went on, Dee Dee and I knew we needed some counseling, that we couldn't get over this hurt by ourselves. We started seeing a grief counselor, Dee Martz, weekly, and we attended a grief workshop at church for eight Monday nights. Through Dee and the workshop we came readily to the conclusion we had to make a decision either to let grief rob us of the rest of our lives or we had the option of doing something positive with the grief.
At a time like this, I believe God allows our faith to be tested. I had to ask myself - "ok, big guy, do you really believe all that 'stuff' you have been telling the people all these years or not?". My faith, stronger than I could ever realize, led me to believe that all this was part of God's perfect plan. I admit I still don't think much of the part of the plan where Josh dies, but I do have the faith that I'll understand why it happened someday. Right now, God is not in the "why" business, and we just have to have the faith that He is in control and has nothing but best wishes for our lives.
I won't presume to give Dee Dee's version of this period because she is in a very different situation than me. I have three grown children by an earlier marriage, but Josh was Dee Dee's only child. She lost her complete identity as a mom, cub scout leader, soccer mom, baseball mom, room mother, etc. all in one feel swoop. Her approach to grief was to a large extent much different than mine. For instance, months later when we finally got the autopsy report back in the mail, I opened it, read the first three lines, which rekindled my anger at a coroner which I already felt was stupid, and I threw the letter down on the kitchen counter. Dee Dee, who has a civil engineering degree from Georgia Tech, and thinks like an engineer at times, picked the letter up and read every line. One important thing we learned in the grief workshop is that men and women grieve differently and each MUST respect the way the other grieves. The divorce rate for couples who lose a child approaches 80%, so this respect is vital to not losing a second relationship.
We made a positive decision to do what we could to help other parents in our situation, and one of the things we have done is to work in the grief workshop about six times as small group leaders for parents who have lost children. When the participants realize you have experienced their pain, it goes a long way in helping them listen to the work shop material.
I also have written a number of newspaper articles about losing a child for the Denver Post and the Colorado Springs Gazette and one magazine article for ParentsMagazine. We like to believe sharing what we learned about handling grief will help others get on with their lives, which, we know, will never be the same.
Josh will be seventeen (we always speak of him in the present tense since we know he's in a better place and we will have a great reunion with him someday) on July 14. His best friend, Garrett, lives not far away and has grown into a fine young man and a good baseball player. We look at Garrett and wonder if Josh would physically be close to Garrett's size. Josh would be driving, probably have a girl friend and we would be thinking about a college for him.
So now, eight years later, do we miss him? You bet. A day doesn't go by we don't think of him. The pain has eased for the most part, but the only way it could go away completely would be for us to give up all memories of josh, and we aren't willing to do that. And we have happy memories as well as sad ones. We are grateful we had him for eight years, and we feel blessed by my other three children who are on their own and are good citizens. One has even provided us with twin grandsons now six years old, and they help fill some of the lonliness we feel about Josh.
I want to leave you with this thought. There is hope even after losing a loved one, whether a child, a spouse, a sibling or a parent. Of course, life will never be the same, but the person you have lost would never want you to let grief rule the rest of your life. Don't bury the grief for if you do it will surely come back to bite you later in life. Face grief head on, as hard as that may be, work you way through it and let God show you the wonderful things He has planned for the rest of your life. You have much to offer this world we live in.
Copyright Hugh M. Eaton, Jr. June 2006
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