Following is a post my sister, Julie, made to Facebook. My sister is a Cardiac ICU nurse and was with me throughout my baby’s passing.
Tomorrow will have been a month.
A month since I sat on a hospital floor with my sister and tried not to believe what was happening.
It has been a month, but this is the first time I have posted anything about that day.
Why?
I can’t really say.
Maybe I felt like I didn’t need to — that day she tagged me in her posts, and without even knowing she had done so I started getting messages and texts from friends all over the country, wondering what was going on. Maybe it’s because I didn’t know what to say — I still don’t know what to say. My sister is so eloquent, a writer by trade, and there is nothing I could express that she hasn’t already said, and said much better.
I think part of what scared me most that day was seeing my sister go through the unimaginable, and feeling completely lost as to how to help her. I’ve never been good with words. I suck at knowing the right thing to say, the right thing to do, what she might need without her having to ask for it.
The whole time they were trying to resuscitate him I stayed in the room, timing compressions, dosing meds in my head, watching his pressures, looking for a rhythm. Because they needed one more nurse in the room? Because I could actually do him any good? No. Because I didn’t know what else to do.
I STILL don’t know what to do.
I don’t know how to best help. I’m sure I generally say the wrong thing. I tell myself I’m going to be completely available to be there at any moment, even if just to be there, then a week goes by without making time to actually get there.
I know my sister will come out of the other end of this standing, even though I know there will never really be an end. Her faith is inspiring. And it certainly isn’t because of anything I have said or done.
So, what I really want to say is, thank you.
Thank you to everyone that has texted, messaged, stopped me in the halls or cried with me in the middle of North Coast. Thank you for keeping us in your prayers. But mostly, thank you to the ginormous village that has kept my sister and her family floating: for the visits, the meals that could have fed the village, the funds that were so generous, the comments to her posts that have made me cry when I thought I was done crying, and especially to the circle of you that are her circle.
You are everything, and I thank you for being everything to my sister.
