The Loss of My Child

On January 14, 1961, I gave birth to a baby girl. We had three sons who were all in school at the time she was born. It was the twelfth year of our marriage. In those days, there was no predicting whether you were going to have a boy or a girl as sonograms did not exist then. So in our minds, we were going to have another boy. We picked the name Tracy Elliot, never dreaming we would have a girl.

While I was in the last part of my labor, actually just before her being delivered, I had a vision that has haunted me until this day. I saw something that seemed to be from biblical times or from another plane. There were two robed men standing in a beautiful place one with a huge stone tablet writing something down and one said, This is infinity, this is female. I never had any kind of anesthesia with any of my children and always had easy births, so why I saw this at this time has bewildered me. I thought perhaps I had passed out, but moments later the doctor told me, it's a girl and I asked him to please make sure. Everyone laughed as I had never expected to have a girl and could not believe it to be true. I was ecstatic. When they told my husband (they did not come in the delivery rooms then) he cried. He was so happy.

When we told our sons they had a sister they were so happy and went around the neighborhood telling everyone, who needed a newspaper or an announcement then. We had liked the boy's name we had picked out so just changed it to Tracey Ellen. She weighed in at 9 lbs. 1 and a quarter ounces.

The largest baby I ever had or had seen. All my sons were in the six to seven pound range, but she was three weeks late. Women do keep you waiting. She had such large eyes that were not opened and I thought they must be swollen, but in a day or so when she did open them they were the most beautiful large "doe" eyes I have ever seen. They were blue then but turned to a beautiful greenish grey when she was about six months old.

She was a beautiful baby and she grew up to be a lovely little girl. She was pretty and feminine in every sense of the word. How we loved her.

She was intelligent and made fast friends and was a good student. She had some problems in school with other girls, never could figure out why. But boys liked her. Maybe that is why the girls were rough on her, competition.

She graduated high school when she was eighteen and because I had studied shorthand and typing and had given me a career, she did the same thing. She got her first job selling clothes in a really nice boutique but that did not hold her interest for that long. She soon was looking to market her skills from school and at about nineteen met a young lawyer just setting up his practice and he offered her a job (very little pay) and he and she set up an office. She was officially a legal secretary. Same first job as I had had. She stayed with this lawyer for about five years and then we moved further away and found another job closer to our home. She went to work for another lawyer who worked with a mortgage company and through this was offered a very good paying and difficult job but she did it well.

She met a man through a dating service and not long after that she married him. As her parents we had our misgivings but remembering that we wanted our own way with our lives, supported her decision. She became pregnant with her first child, a son, about seven months after her marriage.

The marriage was not all that happy for her as he was a controlling man. But together they decided after three years to try and have a girl as that was her biggest desire, she wanted a daughter, like I had too. She bought books and found out how to take tests on when to get pregnant so that you would have a girl. I didn't believe that that would work, but when she did get pregnant and had her first sonogram she was told it was a girl. She developed a weakness in her kidneys during this pregnancy and the baby was born by caesarian section. She was thrilled as I was when she was born and changed one letter in my name and called her Elise.

In just a little while the marriage was heading for the rocks and Tracey told me she thought she was disappearing and asked if she could come home with her children. I told her to be sure before she took such a step, but she did separate from him and later divorced. She and her kids lived with us for almost three years. She was getting sicker all the time from her kidneys and we had a lot of childrearing put upon us once again with her kids. But we loved her and them and it really was no burden on us. We just wanted her to be happy.

In the year 1999, she met a man that was totally different from her husband, this time from the internet. He just lived about a half hour away and almost from the time they met, she knew he was the one for her.

All her adult life she told me that she was never going to get old. She told me she had had past lives and never got out of the thirties. I didn't want to believe her, but she made me make such weird promises to her, never let her be a vegetable, have her cremated, that kind of thing. I promised her and made her promise me the same thing if I should be in those positions.

As she was born when all of our sons were in school, it was almost like having an only child again, and we were so close. There was nothing we didn't do together especially when she was a grown woman. I retired when her son was only seven months old and we spent so much time together. We were each other's best friend. I looked forward to her morning calls every day and we planned where to go and what to do or she would just come and visit. My husband adored her and she was the joy of his life.

On May 20, 2000, she married her second husband, her soul mate. It was wonderful to see her so happy. Her children were now eight and twelve. The marriage ceremony included them and her husband married the family as well as her. It was so beautiful. She was still not well, but he vowed to take care of her. I could see the pain in her face and she was 39 years old.

They went to Bermuda on a cruise for their honeymoon and we took care of the kids. Even from the cruise ship she found a way to email me every night and we would spend a lot time talking back and forth that way. She wanted to make sure her kids were okay.

Just eleven weeks after her wedding, on August 14, 2000, she called me in the morning to tell me she was not feeling to well and could we go shopping a little later in the day. I asked her if I could just get the kids and do her shopping from a list, but no she would pick me up. About two o'clock that afternoon she said she was on her way, so I got ready. She just lived three miles from us so I watched TV until I though she would arrive. At 2:09 the cable went out. I said, some jerk hit a pole. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it could be her and her kids. When she was late in arriving I began to get antsy and kept walking outside to watch for her car. After about fifteen minutes I got in my car to go look for her. I went out the back way where she would have come in and saw this huge traffic tie up and figured she was stuck in it. I came home and sat on our front steps. Someone drove by and I asked did he know what was wrong and he said someone had had a bad accident just above the front entrance of our complex. This should have made me feel better but I didn't. I kept calling her, answering machine, only. After about forty-five minutes, I was in the front of our house talking to my husband when I saw a State Police officer park outside and my heart raced, I knew something had happened. My husband told me to stay put and he answered the door. The Officer had her drivers license. He told us to go to the emergency room of a hospital about thirty minutes away. He could not tell us anything but just told us to hurry. I had to call her husband on his job and they couldn't find him and I left a message. He called back before I got out the door. He was stunned and told me to go. My husband drove us and when we tried to get out of the back entrance, they were letting traffic go in a detour and stopped our car. I got out of the car and told the person directing traffic that it was our daughter and grandchildren in that accident and they let us go. I don't know how my husband kept his cool, I was crying and my heart was racing and I know he was feeling the same feelings as me. But he had been a police officer and I think that training had kicked in.

When we got to the hospital they told me our daughter was brain dead. An adrenalin rush went through me and I thought I was going to pass out. One of the children, the girl, had suffered brain damage also so they were getting ready to transport her to another hospital. I had trouble remembering the children's father's telephone number but my grandson finally could recall it and apparently they couldn't reach him as he was stuck in the traffic of the accident. My grandson was covered with my daughters' blood. I thought it was his and he said don't worry Granny I am okay, I saved Mom's life, I held her head together. Then someone came and told me and my son-in-law that they were also going to transport my daughter to the medical center where they had taken our granddaughter. Seems there were some brain waves or something so they wanted to be sure. Her husband and I followed the ambulance and when we got there, an advocate met us to take care of us and told us to sit in a little room until we could see her. When I did see her I didn't even recognize her. She was bleeding from everywhere, eyes, ears, nose, mouth and her face was so swollen. I didn't think anyone that looked like that could survive.

The doctor's came in and told us they believed she was brain dead and did we know what her wishes were. We both did, but neither of us could tell them not to try to save her. We talked about her funeral on the way home that night. So sure she would never make it. When we got home, my husband was beside himself. He didn't think she would live either. During the night that night, the phone rang and her heart had stopped and I told them they would have to talk to her husband and gave him his number as marriage takes that decision from your hands. He could not let her go so she was put on life support. She had plastic surgery on the few places that were cut on her scalp and a little on her lip. Her face was not marred as she must have put her hands over her eyes before she hit the pole. My grandson said the last thing she said was God save my Children.

She was in the medical center having all kinds of tests and breathing on her own in a few days. After about a month and a half they said they could do not more for her and were sending her to a brain trauma center about thirty miles from where we lived. They were going to try and rehabilitate her. In my mind I knew she would never be better, but my heart would or could not believe it. I drove those thirty mile trips every single day for almost a year sitting by her side, singing to her, talking to her, made tapes of her dad talking to her, her kids, everything I could think of and put earphones on her and played them directly into her brain. Sometimes I thought I saw a change in her expression. Maybe she was in there somewhere, I don't know. After a year, I was diagnosed with a cancer that required surgery and then chemo and I had to cut back on my visits just a little for just a while and then I took up going again. In August of 2002, while arranging her bedding, I felt a lump on her breast about the size of a small orange. I called someone to look at it and they told a doctor. These places don't have doctors there all the time and I guess if you are that way they don't worry about other health problems. It took until November to get a biopsy of the lump and only because she was in the hospital for something else, pneumonia I think, and we got a surgeon. He did a biopsy and removed the whole lump. He put her in a oncologists hands. We got a call from the oncologists that he wanted us to come to his office and her husband and I went. He said the cancer had spread throughout her whole body and she would not live too much longer and would be and was in pain. She did cry all the time. I never knew if you were brain dead, that you could feel pain.

We talked with him and he told us we should talk to the center about not doing anything more to prolong her life. So we met with an ethics committee and the very next day they took her off all life support. She was supposed to die in a half hour. She lived seven days. I will never forget how beautiful she looked. So serene and peaceful. They put her on a morphine drip to control the pain and died on February 11, 2003.

The ache in my heart has never left me. My husband started to go downhill from the time of the accident. The joy had gone out of both of our lives. She died at age of 42, but she really left our lives at 39. So her premonition was true.

Will I ever get over her passing, I don't think so. As I write this my whole body is aching just thinking of her. It is almost four years that she is gone now and I am raising the boy she left behind. He is an emotional cripple because of losing his mother in that way. He thought he had saved her life. He still cannot talk about her and has never grieved her.

To lose a child, no matter how old, is not how it is supposed to be. There is nothing that can compare with it. To all of you that have felt this sorrow I pray for you and with you.