grief

One Hundred Percent of a Life: Part Two

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A Moment Can Change Everything

For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known that you’d ever say goodbye?
And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance

~ The Dance (Garth Brooks)

If we would have only know what that January day was about to usher in what would we have done differently?  If I had known, I would have boldly prayed for the day not to come, the very opposite of Joshua’s sun stand still prayer.  There is a Reba McEntire song called If I Had Only Known.  In that song her emotion strained voice sings out the words that echoed my heart…”I would pray a miracle would stop the dawn.”  But I didn’t know.  Instead I muddled through that blah morning nursing my severe headache with sleep.  I was sleeping away precious moments that I wish I would have savored.  Moments where I could have been memorizing every precious detail I lay sleeping instead.  How could I have known that in just a few hours the illness coursing through my body and the headache pounding in my brain would be the least of my concerns?

It was about 3:15 in the afternoon.  Our household was running right on time even with mommy down for the count.  Santino was downstairs doing therapy with his aide, Katie, and Matt was off to pick Sammy up from full day kindergarten.  The only thing that was somewhat off was Francesca.  It had been three hours and she was still napping.  Now, as a mother of three children I know to appreciate when a baby decides to take a long nap. However, I had an overwhelming feeling that I needed to check on her.  Three hours was great but it was longer than she had ever napped before.  The moment I opened the door I knew something was wrong.  The images of those first few moments are ones that I desperately prayed for God to erase from my memory, which in His infinite love He has.  All I remember is grabbing her in my arms and screaming for Katie.

Everything from that moment on has become a blur, a flash of memories.  A frantic 911 call, Katie performing CPR, me on my knees screaming for a miracle, Matt completely unaware of what was happening as he picked Sammy up from school.  My whole world flipped upside down.  I was moving in both fast forward and slow motion at the same time.  I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience…like I was watching some poor mother as her world came crashing down.  The pieces of her world shattered like glass on a marble floor.  How could something so broken ever be put back together again.  I knew what was happening but I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that it was happening to me.  No!!! This was not supposed to happen.  Police, EMT, Firefighters were everywhere.  Sirens screaming, lights flashing, every aspect of Law and Order present.  In a moment of clarity I screamed to Katie to call Matt.  I have never been as thankful for cell phones as I was in that moment.  I didn’t want him to be caught off guard and I didn’t want Sammy to be scared…I needed her to warn him.  Then I walked outside.  A lone police officer stood there, camera in hand, photographing our house.  Hysteria set in.  Every crime and police show I had ever watched came rushing back to me. I sobbed as he stood there.  I yelled at him, “Why are you taking pictures?  You are taking pictures because she is dead aren’t you?”  That poor officer tried his best to calm and reassure me that this was just routine procedure but I knew better.

My memory of the ride to the hospital is fuzzy at best.  A domino effect of moments occurred in the haze of the chaos.  Matt pulled up to the house, Katie instantly grabbed both Sammy and Santino and off to my parents they went.  I don’t even recall speaking to Matt.  These details are lost to me.  Why?  Where did they go?  I cannot remember who left first, the ambulance or Matt. I cannot recollect why I wasn’t in the car with my husband; did he assume I was going with the ambulance?  In the frenzy of the moment these become the memories that elude you later.  I do have a vivid memory of tail lights; the tail lights of Matt’s silver Jeep Commander as he rushed to the hospital.  He actually made it there before the ambulance.  I later learned that his frantic drive included him driving into oncoming traffic to get to the hospital faster.

I never did get in the ambulance that day.  As I stood on the curb with my world crumbling around me the EMT driver must have sensed my control slipping.  In that moment of utter desperation I will never forget his harsh words barking at me as if I had any control over myself.  “You better calm down.”  Those four words sliced through me sharper than any knife ever could.  This man did not want to deal with a hysterical mother; he had made that abundantly clear.  In that exchange I allowed this man to rob me of being with my daughter on the final ride of her life. By the grace of God one of my dearest friends ended up at my house that fateful afternoon.  Safely tucked in her car, together we drove a path that no parent should ever have to travel.  This would signify the beginning of this same dear friend walking Matt and I down the devastatingly broken road that lay ahead of us.

In the corridor of the hospital I was finally held in the comforting arms of my husband.  I needed him to cover me physically with his body so that I could still feel the life pulsating within us.  Everything around me felt like death but he was my source of life.  He was my protector and I needed his body to shield me from the physical and emotional blow that we were about to take.  Together we both stood there like lost children, scared and bewildered.  Would we get our miracle?  Or would our world implode on what had started as a seemingly uneventful day.

In a small side room at Mt. Clemens General Hospital the emergency rooms doctors confirmed what I had already known; our precious girl had been called home to Jesus. SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) had become our grim reality.  My mind raced…SIDS was something that doctors warned us about but in my mind I falsely believed we were untouchable…it would never happen to us.  I even remember having a conversation on the topic of SIDS once where I cavalierly made the statement, “If it’s God will it will happen, I can’t worry about it.”  What did that even mean?  How could this hell ever be God’s will?  My head was spinning and I just wanted to shut it all down.  As I sat there, the numbness of shock settling in, I heard this sound that can only be likened to an animal that has been mortally wounded.  However, this was no animal…it was husband.  He wasn’t home when I found her, he hadn’t seen her so he sat there waiting…full of hope…full expectation that all would be fine.  The cries I heard coming out of my husband were the audible sounds of hope dying.  That moment broke my husband.  All of his hopes and dreams extinguished in the blink of an eye.  He was broken in a way that in the days to come I wondered if I would ever see glimpses of who he had once been ever again.

Through all of the chaos of this day the one thing I remember with crystal clarity is how much God’s hand been upon us.  He carefully orchestrated the details so that He could carry us through this horrific day.  Details like the fact that Sammy had just started full day kindergarten that week ensuring he was not in the house when everything happened.  The fact that Katie was there to get both of my boys out of the situation, the fact that Matt just happened to be home that day and not traveling out-of-state, the fact that my good friend was literally 30 seconds from my house and drove me to the hospital after the ambulance driver yelled at me to remain calm…as if such a thing was possible.  I am not saying God took Francesca home on this day because of these details I am saying He used these details to reveal that His protective hand had been upon us.  His presence was all around.  As I walked out of the doorway that lead to the triage room where we would say goodbye to our sweet girl I saw a sea of people.  Family, pastors, and friends lined the hallway of the emergency room.  It was like nothing I had ever seen before.  Face after face represented God saying “I’m here, you will not walk this journey alone.”  There must have been close to 50 people at the hospital that day.  Looking back I am in awe at how many people God brought around us in a moment’s notice.  They were there to pray, to minister to not only us but to our family as well, phone calls were made, protocol was explained, and details were arranged.  Matt and I had to do nothing but let them lavish their love on us like salve to an open wound.  Right there in the hospital God had begun the healing process, even when healing seemed so far beyond our reach.  One of my most vivid memories of that day was leaving the hospital.  I had turned around and I caught of glimpse of all of our loved ones who gathered to be with us.  There they stood watching us go, with so much love, so much concern, at such loss for what the right thing to do or say was but knowing that God wanted them there to be His hands and feet.  I can see that image as if it happened yesterday.  In the middle stood our friend Jeff, who was a doctor at the hospital, in his blue surgical scrubs.  Because of his attire he stood out among the crowd of many.  The blue of those scrubs will forever remind me of the day God used His people to save my family from crumbling to nothingness.

 

To Be Continued…

One Hundred Percent of a Life: Part One

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IMG_6480.JPGOne Hundred Percent of a Life

It was the day the world went wrong
I screamed til my voice was gone
And watched through the tears as everything
came crashing down
Slowly panic turns to pain
As we awake to what remains
and sift through the ashes that are left
behind ~ Steven Curtis Chapman (Beauty Will Rise)

Every day of a life matters. Every day of a life counts. In the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon tells us that there is an appointed time for every event that occurs under heaven. Our days are numbered and should never be taken for granted. In the blink of an eye everything we know our lives to be can change. Those are the days when we wake up one person and go to sleep a stranger to even ourselves. The person we were the day before is gone and all that is left is the wounded canvas to build who we will become.

“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven. A time to give birth and a time to die…” ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

I often think about how Mary must have felt on the day of the crucifixion. Watching her son, our Savior Jesus Christ, condemned to death by His own people, brutally beaten at the hands of Roman soldiers, mocked, and ultimately killed. How, with her mothers broken heart did she fall asleep that night? Longing for the child she would never hold again but knowing that His death was the blessing the world had been waiting for. Does that blessing soften the blow of loss? Was she able to reconcile her own heartache with the knowledge that God’s plan had been fulfilled? Or in that moment did she allow herself a few minutes to let the soul crushing heartbreak consume her as she processed that the child she birthed into the world, her son, was gone? I wonder in those moments of solitude if Mary secretly wished God had chosen someone else to be the mother of His Son. When the road gets hard and the pain is all-consuming don’t we all wish, even if only for a moment, that this was someone else’s journey and not our own.

It is so easy to gloss over biblical stories and dehumanize them because the details of raw emotion are not shared. I think this happens quite often in context to Mary and Jesus’ death. Because Scripture doesn’t focus on her feelings we tend not to either. However, a scene in the movie The Passion of the Christ completely changed my perspective on Mary in those moments. The scene is Jesus carrying the cross to Golgotha. Mary is trying desperately to see him and through a corridor she spies him as he falls to the ground and they make eye contact. The movie flips to Mary’s perspective and she has a flashback to toddler Jesus falling and needing his mother’s comfort. In that moment, like most mother’s, she kisses her son’s boo boo away. The movie then returns to the present and Mary weeps for the son that she can no longer help or comfort. What a different picture that paints for our imaginations. Mary, faithful and obedient servant of God, was indeed human and watching her son slowly walk to his death was a very real and painful valley for her to walk through. How enlightening it would be to know what fears and doubts she wrestled with in that moment…the very emotions that allow us glimpses into her humanness. The very emotions that make her just like you and me.

Francesca

January 07, 2008, was an unseasonably warm day in suburban Detroit. Sixty-four degrees is never what one expects to wake up to on a winter morning in Michigan. The day was unusual indeed, almost as if the weather was a sign that on this day nothing would be as it should be. In fact not much in our house that morning was normal. Monday is travel day for my husband. As a regional manager for a large cheese manufacturer, Monday mornings usually consist of an early alarm ringing so he can make his flight to head off to whatever destination the week has in store for him. This morning was different though, no flight to catch and no trip scheduled for the week meant our routine changed. On this weird Monday morning I actually had help getting the boys off to school and I could get our baby girl fed and changed at my own pace. Well, really at her pace cause let’s be honest a 2 ½ month old dictates the pace not the other way around. However, on this particular morning I was slacking a bit. While unseasonably warm weather in winter sounds great in theory, in reality it brought with it a misty rain, fog, and sinus headaches. You know the kind of weather that ultimately winds you up in the doctor’s office waiting for the confirmation that a sinus infection has settled in and the Z-pak would start immediately. It was starting out as a blah day, how I wish it would have stayed that way…

Francesca Isabella Catherincchia came into our lives on October 23, 2007. I will never forget it. American Idol on the television as my mom and I cleared the dinner dishes. My husband was at the church rehearsing for our upcoming Christmas production. As dinner ended I felt lower back pain and cramping but didn’t think anything of it. This wasn’t my first rodeo and having had false labor before I wasn’t getting too excited. I let my husband leave, never for one second thinking that this was the day. I was still two weeks away from my due date and while I had never had a late baby I was never lucky enough to go two weeks early. But it soon became VERY clear that this was it. How perfect, my mom was already at my house; babysitter for the boys, check, husband on his way home to get me, check, prayer warriors in place (my husband was at the church…duh), double check. This was it…we were having our baby!

All babies are special but Francesca was extra special because she was a dream come true and an answer to prayer. After our son, Santino’s, autism diagnosis I had all but given up the idea of having another baby. However, about 9 months after his diagnosis God had placed an unbelievable desire in my heart for another baby. Intense prayer ensued which included me crying out all of my fears of having another child. Studies had shown that families with one child with autism were more likely to have other children on the spectrum. What if that happened? Santino’s therapy schedule was rigorous and already adding stress to our family. Would another baby take us over the edge? Eighty-seven percent of parents with a child with autism end up divorcing. What if we didn’t make it? Autism was still so new to us what if we couldn’t handle a new baby too? I was scared to death and I needed God to understand that I had to trust His decision in the matter because I was all over the board. I vividly remember ending that prayer with these words “God if our family can handle another child please give me the desires of my heart, if we cannot please do not let it happen.” Five months later I was pregnant. God had given His answer and our precious girl was on the way. Interestingly enough, it was this very pregnancy that opened up the door for Santino to receive an in home therapy aide provided by the state of Michigan. The state has a program called the Children’s Waiver which is distributed to children with autism based on the number they score in an intake questionnaire. The more stressors you have on your household the more points you get. In the summer of 2006 we applied and Santino did not have enough points to qualify. However, when the time came to reapply in the summer of 2007 my husband had just lost his job and I was smack dab in the middle of my pregnancy…our stressors were off the charts and Santino qualified. Now, you tell me God doesn’t work in the details.

Throughout my pregnancy our oldest son Sammy would pray “Please God don’t let my baby have autism.” I think in his little 6-year-old mind he saw this baby as a do over. He was struggling with his brother’s autism so this new baby was his opportunity to have a brother or sister that would “talk to him” as he used to say. That was his prayer every single day, at home and at school. He would pray for his baby. Somewhere along the way the baby I was carrying had become his and the excitement would sparkle in his eyes when he would tell me all that they would do together. Yes, this baby was our family’s dream come true.

The moment the doctor said “it’s a girl” my heart soared. Two boys at home and now the little girl in my arms completed the perfect family I had always envisioned for Matt and myself. Sure autism had derailed us for a moment but in the wee early hours of that October morning we had victory…everything was right in the new world we created after our setback. I remember giving birth to my boys and seeing the tears roll down my husband’s cheeks at the precious lives God had given us. But when Francesca was born it was completely different. For the first time in 11 years another girl had captured my husband heart and it will forever remain one of the most beautiful moments I have ever witnessed. Francesca was born a daddy’s girl. Matt had always been a hands-on dad with the boys but with his girl he was absolutely smitten. Often allowing me to sleep, he would do night-time feedings just to have her all to himself. He had big dreams for his Bella girl, as he called her. Isabella being her middle name it seemed that his nick name was only natural. Actually his reference was always drawn from the fact that “bella” in Italian is beautiful and Francesca was his beautiful girl. She signified all that was right and good in our world.

To Be Continued…

Bittersweet Symphony

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Euphoria, noun: a feeling of great happiness and excitement. ~ Merriam Webster Dictionary

Euphoric high. That is what crossing a finish line feels like. Your body may be beaten and battered, your muscles may be screaming that they hate you…but when you cross…ahhhhhh…the high of accomplishment settles in. In that moment the high erases the pain, the set backs, and the obstacles. You revel in the victory of completion.
Every year that is how I feel on Marathon Sunday in Detroit. A euphoric high settles in, not just because I have crossed the finish line, but because once again God has left me in awe of what He can and will do through a group of people who are obedient to His call and faithful to the cause He has laid on their hearts. Every year I wonder how God will top the previous one and yet He always does. This year was no exception. Two days, 60 participants, one VOICE: Santino’s Voice. We were the voice of autism in Detroit for two days in a row and we were loud and we were proud. In us God has birthed a vision that the autism community must be heard and reached…awareness must be raised to bring forth understanding. We are a team that passionately wants every family that runs the race of autism to know that there is a God who loves them and there is hope and rest found in His arms. So we take to the streets, we pound the pavement, we run, we walk, and we do it all for the Glory of God. There is grace, there is acceptance, and there is love. We cross the finish line as individuals but we walk away forever connected as a team, inspired by a precious boy named Santino who runs the marathon of autism daily. We all walk away knowing that we CAN do all things through Christ, who strengthens us, because we see that strength and courage in Santino on a daily basis.

Bittersweet, noun: pleasure alloyed with pain. ~ Merriam Webster Dictionary

The dreariness of the day could not conceal the striking beauty of the fall colors. Deep burnt orange, vibrant red, even dull brown looked breath-taking in the landscape of trees and falling leaves. As I stared out the window I couldn’t help but be in awe of a place that I wish I could avoid, a place I never want to go. We parked the car and approached the little marker as the chill of the air appropriately settled in and chilled me to the bone. The thought crossed my mind, “what a difference a day makes.” Just the day before we were reveling in the accomplishment of our team and celebrating the victories and progress our son, Santino, has made battling autism. But here we stood, a mere twenty-four hours later, grave side, wiping away pine needles and cleaning the marker in the cemetery designated as a memorial to our precious little girl who would have turned 7 this week.  Francesca Isabella Catherincchia October 23, 2007 – January 07, 2008. The reality of the situation washes over me and I recognize that every year I find myself at the bittersweet crossroads of the finish line and the cemetery. I celebrate the accomplishment of one child while my arms ache to hold another, just one more time; to smell that sweet baby smell that was uniquely hers even if it is only in the breeze that fills the fall air.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” ~ Maya Angelou

God is a storyteller, this I know for sure.  Every day that I have the privilege to open my Bible I become more acutely aware of just how important His story is…it is the very lifeline of my life.   Then the light bulb goes off and I realize that God story is far from over and we are all living in the midst of it.   Think about the enormity of that truth…Our God is a story-teller and His story is still actively taking place…WOW!!!  The book of Genesis tell us that we, humanity, are created in the image of God.  Therefore, if my God is a story-teller and I am created in His image…then I must be a storyteller too…my story matters.  That is why there is agony in the untold story…our stories are meant to be told.  In every story…happy, sad, triumphant, and tragic…the beauty of God’s hand print can be seen if we just open our eyes and lift them up to the One who has created us.  I have found, in my own story, that God’s grace does abound when we go through the hardest struggles, when we find ourselves in the deepest oceans, battered by the strongest waves.  It is there that He reaches down to us and the power of His story blends with the fragility of our circumstance.  The result is the epic tale of a Sovereign God who loves His people so much that the pain and heartbreak of this life are never carried alone, but He indeed carries us through the storms.  He brings us to the other side better than any human mind could ever fathom.  Heartbreak is never an end when you walk with God…it is the beginning of new and beautiful normal that is birthed by that showering of His love and grace.  This is a story that matters, a story that needs to be told.  Because in the agony of silence is the robbing of blessing.  When we remain silent we rob those who are suffering from the hope that is found in our Savior.

“Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders…” ~ Hillsong United

Back in the summer I prepared a book proposal, If any of you know anything about the publishing world you know that this is a very detailed lengthy project that includes writing at least one to two chapters of the manuscript that will ultimately become your book, at least you hope it will.  I knew, for some time, that God wanted Francesca’s story told.  I had been encouraged by a few people to pursue that prompting but I held off my obedience until an opportunity sat before like a neon sign screaming “Will you be obedient NOW?!?!”  In July as I prepared for the She Speaks Conference an opportunity was presented to me on a silver platter to meet with a few publishers.  In all my preparation for this conference, emails and webinars and such, the one thought that was continually stressed was…”the point is not to get published, the point is what God is going to do through the process.” That sounded great but so did the idea of getting published.  As I sat nervously before the acquisition editor of a major Christian publishing house the question was posed to me, “What will you do if you do not get a book deal?”  With all confidence I answered, “I will continue to tell my daughter’s story.” I knew that a book deal was just one of many different avenues in which I could tell the story that God wanted me to share.  If it happened great and if it didn’t, rejection would not silence me.  So, here I sit months later…no book deal and no real desire or prompting to write the rest of the book.  My mind travels and I wonder about the loose ends of an unfinished book and then these words echo in my head “the point is not to be published, the point is what God will do through the process”.  Writing Francesca’s story was one of the most healing and precious moments of my life.  Writing a full memoir of my journey was never the point…the point has always been to share how God touched the lives of so many through Francesca.

My only qualification for being God’s story-teller is that He allowed me the honor of being Francesca’s mother; I had the privilege of bringing her into this world and holding her as she exited it.  I had a front row seat to witness one of the most miraculous and precious lives I will ever know and now God would like me to share her with all of you. Yesterday as I sat at the bittersweet crossroads of the finish line and the cemetery I knew it was time…time to share Francesca’s story.  The Spirit has led me to where I must trust that this is what God has called me to do even though it scares me, for the words that I will share will be like my diary opened for all the world to see.  But I trust that God has a plan and a purpose for this story.  Starting tomorrow, through this blog, I will share Francesca’s story.  The chapter I wrote for my book proposal will posted in this blog over the course of the next few days.  My prayer is that it will bring healing and hope to all those who are heartbroken or find themselves at a crossroads.