For the past 20 days, my 3 year old son has been battling pneumonia. As a parent it’s always difficult to see your child sick, but I have never experienced the kind of helpless despair that came and went over these last weeks as we watched our little boy wasting away, day after day, fever after fever, struggling for every shallow breath.
Your mind goes to impossible places, and life takes on a reality we don’t often feel when coasting through the weeks on auto-pilot. Losing your child, something thousands of loving mothers and fathers experience every day, must be a sorrow so deep and paralyzing that my own breath grows short at the thought. It wrenches me out of my comfort zone to a place where life is delicate, urgent, and happening now.
My son is now recovering, thanks to a selfless mother, loving friends, supportive grandparents and alternative medicines. My own recovery may take longer, as these sobering experiences have shaken me out of my automatic daze and left me with a sense of appreciation for every shining moment of health and togetherness we’ve been gifted.
The Music of our Lives
With these thoughts coloring my experience this morning, I stumbled onto an article about a man making music from the heartbeats of dying children. I can only assume your reaction to reading that sentence was the same as mine.
I wasn’t sure I could bear to watch it. But I did, and you should too:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/recorded-heartbeats-brian-schreck_n_5552019.html
Life is a song,
Every heartbeat keeps time,
As we dance out our days in life’s flow.The present’s a gift,
Count the heartbeats you love,
They do not come back once they go.~R.Stover
Since hearing the music of that young man’s heart, I find myself sensitive to the hearts beating around me. We know we need a heart to live… but it’s easy to forget we need more than just our own. Stop reading. Go hug somebody.