Hello All
I hope this post isn’t out of place. My wife and I had an experience we’d like to share. Part of this I copied and pasted from a letter I sent a friend regarding the abortion issue. I hope it makes a difference for someone.
My wife and I were expecting our second child last year when in July we were told that our baby, our daughter, had a condition known as Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a congenital heart defect where the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped. Probably the last words any expecting parent wants to hear is, “Something is wrong with your baby”. The news, of course, was devastating. Then we were told that we had several options: Abortion(although it is never said this way, it is always, “terminating the pregnancy”)(at 5 months), compassionate care(take the baby home and wait for her to start gasping for breath, not call 911, just wait for her to die), a heart transplant, or a series of three heart surgeries to rework her heart. The last option would require her first open heart surgery with a week after birth. For our daughter it was after only 26 hours.
Further, my wife would have to undergo further testing to rule out chromosomal defects. Some of which are pretty nasty –mental retardation, deformities, etc.
That evening, among the tears, the sadness, the fears, the greatest challenge ever to confront our marriage and our lives, we decided we really had no choice at all. She was our daughter!! For all the challenges she might have, for all the difficulties we’d had to face – we owed it to her to do our best.
That night we gave her her name – Sara Teresa Araujo.
Sara was born October 27, 2003 at 10:27 am. She was very healthy otherwise, she underwent her first surgery and came through with flying colors. Three weeks later she was home with us. We kept her home and away from germs, waiting for her second surgery sometime in April. In the interim, we gave her many baths, changed many diapers, dressed her in pink girlie clothes. She would sometimes sleep on my chest, nuzzled under my chin. I’d cradle her in my arms as she slept. No one could tell she wasn’t perfectly healthy, except for a scar down the middle of her chest.
On February 18, 2004, between 5 and 5:30, my daughter passed away in her sleep. I had been the last one to carry her and rock her to sleep. I was the last one to hold her. Mine was the last face she ever saw. It comforts me a great deal to know that when she closed her eyes for the last time, all she knew was love, kindness and happiness. And next time she opened her eyes she was in Gods presence.
To think that abortion was offered to us as a compassionate “out” of our pregnancy reminds me of how confused our society is. How perverse and distorted our moral compass has become. We were offered the physical dismemberment of our daughter to save us from the pain of dealing with a special needs child. In order that my wife and I avoid pain, we would have to sacrifice our daughter.
When we found our daughter not breathing that morning, we called 911 and eventually found ourselves in the hospital talking to a doctor who told us our daughter was gone. I’ve cried every day since February 18. I expect to grieve for Sara with my last breath.
When we buried her, close to 400 people attended her service. Deaon Bruce who had baptized her at the hospital was now officiating at her funeral 3 1/2 months later.
I remember reading once in “When Bad things happen to good people” by Harold Kusher, that it is a great misnomer to refer to certain things as acts of God(earthquakes, fires, etc). These are acts of nature. The acts of God are actually; people who donate food and time to victims of earthquakes, or heroes who run into buildings to save people trapped - or 400 people who attend a funeral for a child, most of whom never even met her.
But there is a blessing in this tragedy. You see, I got to meet my daughter. I got a chance to hold her and kiss her. I changed her diapers and give her baths. I got to see her smile when she saw me kneeling by her crib. She held my finger and it gave her comfort. I fell in love with my child and I think I can be pretty certain she loved me. I sleep at night knowing that I gave her my best and I had been willing to give more, everything, had I been asked. I don’t think, “God took Sara”. Sara died as I will, as my wife will, as all living things are destined. But it gives me great peace that she did not die by my doing. That I didn’t send her away in the horror of a surgical procedure that would have ended with my daughter in a trash bin. It gives me great peace to know that when I meet my daughter again, I’ll feel elation, rather than shame at our reunion. It gives me great peace to know that when Sara and I meet again and I tell my daughter I love her, she will believe me.
Thank you for your time and God bless you all
Miguel
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