Home of the Four Trans

Elijah Daniel Update: Good news is he’s back at home and is on track for surgery as scheduled. Not so good news is he still needs the surgery. Please continue to pray for his family, Mama and Papa Porta, and Baby Elijah Daniel.

Mama Porta of Elijah Daniel’s blog is not only heartbroken over her own child’s sickness and upcoming surgery, but she is also mourning the loss of her heart friend’s baby, Helena. It was only 2 months ago when I happened upon this little girl’s blog. Eagerly, I read from beginning to recent because I was so excited to find a child who was doing so well after her 2 heart surgeries despite some road blocks along the way. Just this past week, she had her third and overcame with “flying colors,” according to her parents. Within days, during recovery, she went into cardiac arrest. She was almost 2 years old.

I left the blog open on the computer and went to sleep with prayers in my head for all the heart babies of this world. Loi woke me the next morning with,

“The little girl passed away.”

“I know,” I responded.

“I don’t want to lose, Justin.”

Then, he hugged me. Over Loi’s shoulder I saw my little man waking up beside my big man, kicking his little left leg, up and down. I watched as he squirmed from side to side while rubbing his eyes with his fisted hands.

“He’s waking up,” I told Loi.

Loi left my side and turned to Justin who was then looking intently into his father’s eyes and smiling. Every morning, this is the ritual:

he’d wake up.

upon finding us, he would stare, bat his arms, and squirm until we acknowledged him;

then, he’d pull his legs in and scrunch his body in delight

and smile at us.

Our life with him on this earth has been a mere 8 months. Eight months–that’s only 2% of my entire lifetime. Yet, we have these endearing things with him, rituals, memories. Aside from my time with Nathan, everything else in my past pales in comparison to these few months that I’ve had with my boy. It is as if my entire life had been lived in a haze until he came along, and then I really started living. What will happen when this life leaves me? How will I have the strength to let go?

The longer we have, the greater the hope, the harder it will be…to let go.

You know the old saying, “It is better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all”? Well, is it? Is it better to have all the years of getting to know my baby only to lose him? Or, is it better to not have had the opportunity to know him at all? Would miscarriage or abortion been easier…on all of us?

My decision at 19 weeks gestation was to give Justin the life he always deserved. The fact that he survived and was born to this life was a blessing, a miracle from the Lord. I cannot tell you if it would have been easier any other way. But, the way we see it, we got the better end of the deal because we got Justin.

Nineteen months. Helena’s parents had nineteen months with her. Oh, I can only imagine the memories they shared. Their grief is not one I can begin to understand at this point in our journey. But, I know with all that that child had given them, the love, the laughter, they, too, would not have wanted it any other way.

Please have a moment of silence in your busy lives, free from all your worries and endless thinking, and pray for this little girl and her family.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 1:34 am and is filed under Heart Disease, Justin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.