Conner

***Disclaimer: this blog is very selfish.  But I just had to get it out tonight.****

Tomorrow is (would've been?) Conner's 3rd birthday.   I was walking through the store today thinking about things I might get Dylan for his birthday, and thinking how I might feel if he weren't here, thinking about how I feel because Conner's not.  Thinking about losing him.  Strange to think that phone call came more than a year and a half ago--that he's now been gone longer than he was here.  I think I can finally talk about it.

What a strange, strange day it was (well, it was like living for weeks in a bizzaro world, but that first day especially).  It was the middle of the afternoon on Friday, and I was getting ready for Girls Camp that was to start Monday morning.  I was listening to the music for camp and thinking what a wonderful opportunity it was and just how generally great life was.  I started walking up the stairs with a load of laundry when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Do you have a car today?"

"Who is this?"

"Its Manda.  Do you have a car? Could you come pick up Clayton?"

"Sure. Doug's got the car, but I could go get it.  What's up?"

"Conner drowned."

At those words, my brain shut off (self-defense mechanism, I suppose) and I started running on auto-pilot.  I called Doug and told him that I was coming to get the car because I had to go to Hanford and pick up Clayton.  When he asked why, I rather matter-of-factly said, "Conner drowned."  With a horribly screaching, cracked voice he said, "To death?!"  Automatic pilot off, uncontrollable sobbing on.

I rushed the kids over to Doug's office.  Clayton Lucas and his wife, Lora, just happened to be there (they had moved back into town that week, and had been having lunch with Scot) and offered to take the kids for us.  So we hurriedly unloaded their car seats and drove way too fast across 198.  When we got there, Clayton was playing outside with a little stuffed animal the nurses had given them.  Amanda was going through moments of steadiness with random waves of tears.  I saw him briefly--he looked so small, hooked up to his breathing tubes.  His eyes weren't open, but not quite shut all the way.  A few glances from a distance away across the room was all I could handle.  While Doug and Amanda and Tim talked, I prayed over and over that the Lord would spare his life, make him whole.  After about an hour it occurred to me that I was praying for what I wanted, not asking the Lord to help me accept whatever His will may be.  As soon as that thought entered my mind, I figured that was a foreshadowing of things to come, and I started crying again and said a brief prayer: "Heavenly Father, if Thou see fit, please heal this little boy.  If that's not Thy will, please give me the strength to be the kind of support Amanda and Tim will need.  Just give me the strength to believe that whatever happens is right. Please.  In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

When they got him stable enough to chopper to Valley Children's, I put Clayton and Rachel in my car with me and drove home to my kids.  Doug got in Mom's car and drove up to Valley Children's with her and Chuck to be with Amanda and Tim, come what may.  We made lots of phone calls that afternoon and evening.  Already we knew it didn't look good.  Just being awake was exhausting.  

That night, Mom and Dad and Doug got back to our house just before 11.  I had put the other 3 kids to bed for the night (cuddling Clayton extra long) and so we talked a bit.  Doug and Chuck had given Conner a blessing, and it was abundantly clear that it was a final blessing.  So now we were all kind of waiting.  The worst possible kind of waiting.

Doug and I had finally decided to go to bed, and just as we laid down, the phone rang. I didn't want to answer.  Mom simply said, "Conner's gone."  I knocked on the door of the room Nate and Melissa were staying in to let them know.  Then I went and got Keilana out of her bed, Dylan out of his crib and Clayton off the floor, and arranged them all snugly in the bed between Doug and I.  One child was gone, and I knew there was nothing I could do about it.  And so I needed to know that the others were safe--I needed to feel their soft, warm little bodies next to me, needed to see the rise and fall of their breath and just know that they were OK.

For that first week I had to convince myself that it wasn't counter productive for Amanda to be around me.  I felt so awful for her, that I could barely control myself.  She would watch Dylan with this unintentionally heartbreaking look on her face and I knew that if the shoe were on the other foot, every time I looked at Conner I would think, "Dylan's not here. I don't have my little boy."  I felt almost guilty that I still had my baby, when she had had to watch hers slip away.  I have finally learned how to cope and thus be a better friend to her--we can talk about him now with smiles and laughter, and in moments when the laughter turns to heavy sighs or tears, I can give her a hug or a hand on the shoulder with only minimal tummy flops, rather than feeling like my entire stomach has been turned inside out.  

I had nightmares for months afterward about losing one of my kids (often in the nightmares the child I lost was one I hadn't had yet in reality).  Those began to subside last summer and finally stopped altogether.  Its caused me to think a lot about my grandmother.  She lost one child shortly after birth, another when he was in his 20s, still another when she was in her 50s.  It doesn't seem fair that any mother should have to bury three of her own children.  But my grandma seems to just accept that life is, in fact, unfair.  She isn't a sad or bitter woman.  She trusts that, as much as she'd love to have her children with her,  that where they are is a better place.  If I lost one of my children, I am positive I would be heartbroken and devastated.  Because of her example and my testimony of the Gospel, I think I'd be OK.  I'm grateful for that comfort.

I will never forget my sweet little 3 year old comforting me that week.  She asked me the next morning if Conner was still at the hospital.  "No, sweetie," I said, "Conner died. He went back to Heavenly Father."  She looked up at me and smiled and said, "So no more owies?!"  I smiled back at her and said, "No, sweetie, he'll never have any more owies ever again."  She threw her hands up in the air and said, "Yay!! No more owies for Conner!!"  A few days later at the family viewing just prior to the funeral, she asked me if she could give Conner a kiss goodbye.  I lifted her up so that she could lean over the casket and kiss his forehead.  She gave him a quiet little kiss and then told me, "He's going to be with Jesus Christ now.  He'll be OK."  Out of the mouths of babes.

My own son's birthday will for me always be tied to little strings of grief for a cousin he won't even remember.  But that's OK, because I don't ever want to forget.  His little rubber-legged Gollum walk, his beautiful mouth, his big, marvelous blue eyes, his ridiculously peaceful, contented nature.  I want to remember it all.  And Dylan will be my reminder.  I will always carry in my mind and heart my last memory of the two of them together--both of them 16 months old walking up to me together, each of them with a cup in his hand, shoving it up toward me, saying "Mama! Mama!" together, hoping for more juice.  And then, just a little later, both of them chasing Amanda, shouting, "Mama! Mama!" in search of more fruit snacks.  Every time Dylan snuggles up to his auntie Amanda and goes crazy playing monster with his uncle Tim, I remember and am grateful for how special their little boy was to me.  I'm grateful they shared him.