Sammy's Heaven Day

Yesterday, July 22, we celebrated what Camille has come to call "Blue Balloon Day," otherwise known as Sam's Happy Heaven Day.

Bill and I have known since Sam and Hannah died in the NICU 8 years ago that we would never stop honoring their life on this earth and the special place that they hold in our family's history and in our memories and hearts.  For people peering in from the outside, their lives were excruciatingly brief, a drop in the bucket which gets more diluted as time goes on.  However, NICU life runs on a different clock. 

The ten days of Sam's life and the 24 of Hannah's seemed like numerous months, where we spent minute after minute and hour after hour at their incubator-sides, waiting intently as we got updates on their progress, talked incessantly to them, prayed, read a bunch of great books, prayed, "contained" them with our hands through the circular doors into their "spaceships," prayed, and came to know the staff like a second family.  One day alone could seem like years as we were hit with varying degrees of stability in the course of 24 hours... celebrations of improvement in lung function in the morning and increased feedings of breastmilk via NG tube by noon, only to be balanced out by signs of fever and a severe infections or even code blues by nightfall.  Never have we grieved so many little things and celebrated so many milestones in such a short amout of time, the climax of which was grieving their losses on earth while celebrating their entrances to heaven.  Never have we been forced to grow so much so quickly.  Sam and Hannah's lives changed us forever; they made us better parents and better people.  So....we owe it to them to remember them and thank them. Our lives would be profoundly different had they not been in it.

For a few years when Camille was little, we released balloons to them on their birthday, July 12.  A couple of years back, Bill and I decided that we didn't want Camille's birthday to be about honoring Sam and Hannah; we wanted to let her birthday be about her as an individual.  We decided instead to celebrate their heaven days, making it a celebration of their life here and the beautiful days they left this world, a place which proved to be too harsh for them. 

While obviously I think about them much during this time, we cetainly don't make a day of of it with the kids.  We usually take about 5 minutes to release balloons, watching them float away across the horizon.  The kids do know what the ballons are for and who they are for; we don't hide Sam and Hannah's existence.  We do mention them fondly, and like to think that they are present in our lives.  However, in our everyday life, they are not mentioned every day, sometimes not even monthly.

That is why I guess I was a bit taken by surprise this year when the following came home from school.  Camille's class was doing a unit on holidays:
















She holds them in her heart, and every once in awhile, it comes out when we least expect it.

I wonder about the mystery of multiple births, if the time in utero spent together bonds the babies in any special way.  I have heard stories of such. 

Someday, I will ask her. 

Mom's Letter to Camille

Dear Camille,


Someday, when you are older, perhaps you will read my blog. Perhaps not. I do know that my thoughts are not for you to know now, and they certainly are not for you to understand now. However, later in life, they may be a momento to you and who I was when you were young as well as who you were when you were young.


Today is the day of your 8th birthday, and it has been an extraordinarily memorable day. We spent it celebrating on vacation in the mountains, Estes Park, CO to be specific...as I know you are into specifics. Grammie and Pappie are here with us. You got to set the agenda for the day, which was PERFECT because you find agendas quite thrilling....such a planner you are. We ate breakfast in a local cafe with your usual fare of a cinnamon roll. We traveled up the Aerial Tramway and spent a couple of hours exploring at the top of the mountain feeding chipmunks and hiking a bit. After that: FUNPLEX for minigolf, bungee trampolining, super-high slides and bumper boats. You picked Bill and Tony's Pizza for supper, followed by hot-tubbing at the condo, exploring the Big Thompson River again, opening presents, and eating gourmet cupcakes. I don't think we could have filled the day any fuller, which is appropriate because that is the way you are each day of your life.


Okay, now onto the profound....because I am a thinker, you know.


I knew I was going to resurrect my blog today. I have been meaning to for awhile now, and today presented the perfect opportunity...vacation means time to blog and your birthday meant an obvious event to blog about.


I figured it would be something light and fluffy. But then, at breakfast, you had to go and leave me speechless.


As we were sitting around the breakfast table at this oooh-tooo-local cafe, you asked me, point blank, "Mom, are you happy that I was born on July 12 instead of October 23?" (The background, of course, is that October 23rd was your due date. Your birthdate, July 12, came 15 weeks too soon, bringing you into the world at a whopping 1# 13 oz.)


I sat in silence, as did everyone at the table, stunned by the question and the complexity of the answer. Today, you were only 8. I do not believe in not telling you the truth; however, I also do not believe in loading you down with information that you should be protected from by childhood innocence. So...your dad and I very truthfully answered, "Camille, we love absolutely everything about you. We would never want to change a thing about who you are."


As you grow older and undoubtedly learn more about science and the gravity of what it means to be born so very prematurely, you will come to question a few things with that extremely curious mind of yours. You will realize that had you been born on October 23rd instead of July 12, things would probably very different. In all honesty, you would not have had to fight so vehemently for your life as a baby. You would likely not have a significant visual impairment. You would not have battled glaucoma and had to have an enucleation. You wouldn't have surgeries numbering in the double-digits already. You would probably have a very normal gait and "mild cerebral palsy" would probably not be words in your medical record. You wouldn't have had to fight for every developmental milestone those first few years of life. Sam and Hannah would probably be alive on this earth.


What you NEED to know is that you would also not be the amazing person you are today. You might not have this crazy, wacky, out-of-the world IQ that you have. Your musical talent might not be what it is. This amazing curiousity that you have may not exist. You might not be the wonderful friend that you are to others, being completely non-judgemental and open to everyone else's gifts and attributes. You may not be the determined, hard-working girl that you are. You wouldn't be "bilingual" in braille and print. You wouldn't be the adaptive technology guru that you are. Your zest for life and your unwavering spirit may be lost. You may not be this amazing source of inspiration that you have become to people we know and love, as well as people whom we meet briefly in passing. You would not have two amazing angels hovering about you. You may not have Jack and Liv. You would not be YOU and because of this, I would be saddened, and the world would be missing out terribly. I am not too foolish to realize that even the smallest of events on this earth affect many other events that follow. I don't want to even envision what life would have been like if life hadn't happened as it did. There are too many variables, and we have found too many gifts in even the hard times. We have found giftedness in the way that the chips have fallen. And boy, has your life graced this world.


From the minute you were born, I could sense that you were a survivor. The vibes coming from your corner of the NICU gave the message, "I will not go down without a fight." At the same time, you were a sweet bundle of babe with charisma and an instant fan club. This is still you today, and can be yours for the rest of time.


The world is yours.


Love you to the moon and back and infinity and beyond,


Mom