Remembering Zachary

This is is something that I wrote a while ago to remember a little one that will not be spending today, his first birthday, on Earth where it seems that he should. At the time that I wrote it, I was not sure why I was so inclined. I just needed to. Maybe it was for me. Maybe it was for his mommy, my friend. Maybe it was simply to honor his memory. He was here. His life means something. It was significant, no matter how short. It impacted me. It impacted many. With my friend's permission, today - one year later - I post my memory of the day that he was born and what led up to that day. Happy birthday, Zachary. My heart is with you, Amanda.

Facing My Fears and Finding a Forever Friend

 ((This is a story that is very much not about me… but it is about my perspective during another family’s story and the way that their story has impacted my life.))

It has been a year.  A year since I began a walk with a friend through perhaps the darkest valley of the shadow of death that I have ever experienced.  Though I would never wish it on her for the sake of what I have gained from it, my life has been forever changed because of it.  For that, I am eternally grateful. 

After my miscarriages, I felt an incredible connection most anytime that I heard of another that was enduring the same.  Sometimes I had the strength to respond.  Sadly, sometimes, I did not.  Always though, my heart was broken for my friend or acquaintance that I was hearing the terrible news about.  When I was miscarrying and recovering and grieving I felt so alone and lost.  I didn’t know what was coming next.  I was constantly in a state of surprise at the way that reality would crash into me.  For others that I would hear about that were enduring a loss after me, I wanted to be there for them to give them a “heads up” and to stand beside them to do what I could to hold them up when their lives seemed to be crumbling around them.  I didn’t want them to feel the same sense of loneliness and uncertainty that I had felt.  So, while I did not have anything to offer in the way of making their baby come back to life, I had experience, compassion, and a bit of understanding.  I had felt many of the same feelings, had the same sort of irrational, scary dreams, and suffered as I tried over and over to walk back into my life the way that I had known it only to find out that it was never going to be the life that I once had.  I wanted to bear all of those burdens with the ones that were now bearing them for the first – or not the first – time.

One day in October of 2006 I heard that a girl in our small group at church had lost her baby.  My heart broke for her, and although I wanted to reach out to her I was nervous to pick up the phone and call her.  She and I had had conversations before, but I am a shy person and a person that had just gone through a few turbulent years, so making new friends was not my strong point.  I was not sure if she would want to talk to me – a near stranger.  But I did it… I called, and we talked for a while on the phone.  I remember when we hung up that I told her that I would be calling her and keeping in touch and meaning it in an unusually serious way.  I was so sad when we got off of the phone…   The next several months are a blur, but I remember that we talked a few times after that.  I remember hearing that she was again pregnant.  I remember getting an e-mail that the baby was a girl… then another that said, “Oops!  It is really a boy.”  I remember that I saw her at a friends’ house that spring and she looked beautiful with her little baby-bump.  She was glowing.  We talked about how her older two kids would both be in school the next year and how special that it would be to spend one-on-one time with the baby that she had worked so hard to have.

In January I heard about a lady at our church that was in the hospital waiting to deliver her stillborn baby.  Karen.  I was heartbroken for her.  A little later that day, I had this thought that I should call and see if they needed anyone to take pictures of their baby boy after he was born.  I instantly was consumed with fear and did not call.  I rationalized it by thinking, “I don’t even know them.  I need to give them their privacy.”  I don’t know if I would have been asked to come or not had I made the call, but the thought of going into a hospital room in the midst of intense grief and a baby that was no longer alive terrified me.  And if they had wanted me to come, what would I do with the pictures once I took them?  Did I want them on my family’s computer at home?  Could I stand to edit them?  Where do you even print things like that?  I was scared of all of it.

After that time, I was a bit consumed with the idea that God might be calling me to minister to families that were in the midst of losing a baby by taking pictures for them.  I was terrified and felt some sort of anticipation all at the same time.  I spent a lot of time looking at websites of photographers that offer the service of photographing terminally ill babies and babies that have already passed away.  Each time that I looked at these websites, I was surprised at myself that I was not scared by the pictures and was only thankful for the blessing that the family had something tangible to hold on to once their baby was gone.

The next time that I think that I heard anything from my pregnant friend, was a warm April afternoon in 2007.  It was a Wednesday.  I was at the neighborhood sandbox with my baby.  The phone rang, and it was a friend calling to say that our friend was in the hospital.  Her baby was trying to come, and they were trying to stop it.  It was way too early.  I remember yelling, “Oh no!  Not Amanda!”  She had already been through so much.  She was so close to being at a point that the baby could survive.  I started praying and felt sure that her baby boy would be okay.  She had been on prolonged bedrest before to save a pregnancy.  It worked then.  Surely it would work again.  A few hours later another friend called with an update.  I actually remember answering the phone anxiously and almost happily… sure that I was getting the “it’s all okay now” report.  Quickly, my emotions changed.  It was my friend, Amy, calling to say that Amanda wanted to know the name of the funeral home that we had used for our baby… her baby was gone.  She was now waiting in the hospital to deliver him.  I cried.  And cried.  Then I felt an overwhelming need to be with her.  Amy and I arranged to leave for the hospital in the next few hours.  I called the lady, Karen, that had delivered the stillborn baby in January asked her what to do.  We had become friends since her baby was born.  She told me to tell Amanda to take as many pictures as she could – it would be almost all that she would have to remember her baby by.  She also told me about how having a blanket that she could wrap her little one in when he was born and then take home with her had been such a blessing.  As I was on my way out the door I thought, “I wonder if I should grab my camera.”  I had no intention of going to the hospital to play the role of the photographer.  I simply wanted to be there for my friend.  Something inside of me told me to get the camera.  I think I almost said, “no” out loud… then I grabbed it and ran out the door.  Amy and I met and went to the store to look at the blankets on the baby aisle.  I remember the odd feeling that I would have as I would pick one up and say, “Awww, this is a cute one.”  Then the reality of the situation would crash down on me.  The reason that we were actually buying the blanket.  We bought a blanket – the smallest one that we could find - and drove to the hospital.  We talked about everything under the sun… How we didn’t know what to expect, how we were heartbroken for our friend… and every menial thing that we could think of to distract ourselves from reality.  As we walked into the hospital my heart was pounding.  What was there to say or do that could possibly be helpful?  Nothing.  But I had to be there.  If she’d let me stay. I had to remain by her side.

When we walked into Amanda’s room, I was surprised to see the calmness with which her husband, James, and she sat there.  Later, I would realize that it was a state of shock combined with God’s grace that they were experiencing, and I would learn to feel it that night as well.  We sat and talked to pass the time as she waited for the time to come for her precious baby to be born.  Amy and I told her that we would stay as long as she wanted us to or could leave at any time.  She seemed to want us to stay.  We learned that a name had been chosen for the baby.  Zachary James.  Zachary.  “Remembered By God.”  How heartbreakingly fitting was the meaning of his name.  As we sat and waited for time to pass, the nurses would come and go from the room and tried to prepare Amanda for what would happen when Zachary was born… as if that was possible.  American Idol was on the TV in the background, and I remember thinking how odd and almost infuriating it was that life goes on in spite of situations that seem earth-stopping … the same way I had felt when I would observe people continuing their life of normalcy after my losses.  At one point, Amanda coughed then asked me to go get the nurse.  Later, I would find out that at that moment Zachary began being born. 

Moments later, Amy, Amanda’s mom, another friend, and I went to the waiting room of the hospital to await the birth of Zachary.  It was not unlike many other hospital waiting room experiences that I had had… watching families look at their new ones through the nursery window, seeing moms walk down the hall in their robes to go see their newborns in the nursery, nervously chatting with those that are waiting, praying for the mom in labor… but it was vastly different at the same time.  There was a sickness in my stomach that I had never known.  A feeling of sadness in my heart that was deep and unfamiliar.  After a while, I walked down the hall to see if the nurses could tell us anything.  They told me that Zachary was born… that is all that they could tell me.  I observed them for a moment as they chose a small blanket and gown for him from a collection of handmade things that some ladies at a church had made.  The blanket made the one that Amy & I had brought seem the size of a king size comforter and the gown was the tiniest piece of baby clothing that I had ever seen.  I walked away from the nurses’ station with tears flowing down my cheeks.  I passed a nurse coming out of Amanda’s room whose face matched mine.  Later, I found out that this was her first case like this.

A little while later, the four of us that had been in the waiting room wandered down the hall towards Amanda’s room.  Amy and I whispered that we had never been in a situation like the one that we were about to be in, and my stomach churned.  I had peace and composure that I did not understand, but the uncertainty of what laid before me was sickening.  Would Amanda and James be uncontrollably emotional?  Would I become that way?  What would the baby look like? 

I entered the room to find a mama sitting in her hospital bed lovingly staring at her newborn baby.  She seemed in awe him – not unlike other mothers that I had witnessed after a baby has been born.  She was calm and the tears gently flowed.  The baby was perfect.  Tiny and beautifully perfect.  She showed him to us with a combination of pride and sorrow that was interesting to me.  We were told that he had not, in fact, been born still but had had a tiny heartbeat for a little while.  Soon after we were in the room, someone handed me Amanda’s camera and asked me to take pictures of the baby.  It was a moment that came to be that I somehow knew was about to happen.  The camera would not work very well, so I offered to go to my car and get my camera.  This moment too happened as if it was a part of a script that I had already read. I walked to the car shaking slightly, still feeling that unexplainable peace, and knowing that this was what I was supposed to be doing.  It was right.  Not scary in any way… as I once had imagined that it would be.  I came back into the room and proceeded to take the most emotion-filled pictures that I think I have ever taken.  The sense of calmness remained as we positioned the baby different ways, as his parents and grandmother took turns holding him, as the nurse dressed him. Every once in a while I would be overcome with emotion and I would go behind the column in the room and breathe deeply and shed a tear.  But for the most part, I did not cry.  I was determined not to.  At that point, time became a blur.  I think that we were probably in that room for a couple of hours before all of the pictures had been taken and the time seemed right for us to leave. 

I stayed up almost that whole night processing what I had just lived.  Thinking about my friend.  Imagining what she might be feeling. In awe of what I had just seen and done.  Mostly, I was in disbelief of how God was working all things together for good in spite of the horrificness of the situation.  If I had never lost a baby, I do not think that my heart would have been sensitive to the idea that I could be a part of documenting the death of a baby.  If I had not known Amanda, I might never have had the nerve to call a family and offer my camera and myself.  Because I have now done what I was terrified to do and because I can get my friend’s input on the experience from her perspective, I feel like I could do it again.  I would hate to get that call, but now I am willing to get it and act upon it.

The next days and weeks I witnessed faith and God’s grace in an almost tangible way through the lives of James and Amanda.  While there were obvious times of deep sorrow and grief, there was a constant state of peace that passed all understanding.  I had the privilege to learn from them and grieve with them and try to comfort them.  I do not take that lightly.

Since that night in April, my friend Amanda has become one of the dearest friends that I have ever had.  This experience has pulled us from our different places in life and bonded us together.  Walking this walk beside her has given me perspective into my own life and losses that I am certain I would not have without it.  For that, if for nothing else, I am thankful.