Part 2: Fatherhood
Part II
“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
Broken, battered, and scared my family started our life together.
We had endured weeks of struggle in the hospital, but this time we left the NICU with Jack. For the first few months we had him home there were times when I felt more like Jack’s nurse than his father. Our nightly routine involved all the normal things like bathing him, feeding him, and loving him. Despite all the normal routines, there was another component--the medical component. Every night we had to clean Jack’s stoma, the area around his trach and change his trach ties. After that, all of his medical equipment, (heart monitors, breathing tubes, and other devices), had to be hooked up to him. In fact, Jack needed so much nightly medical attention we moved his crib out of his room and into our bedroom for the first year and half of his life.
During that first year, something else happened, healing started.
Physically Jack began to stabilize and slowly I, with help of some special people, started the process of recovering from my emotional and spiritual wounds. While he was in Charleston Jack had at had several surgeries. However, in March 2012 we were preparing for his first major surgery. Jack needed a cranial vault expansion. A week before his surgery, one of Ashley’s coworkers, (whose husband is an Anglican priest,) approached Ashley about having Jack baptized. While I was still very angry at God and personally wanted no part in Church, I knew how much this meant to Ashley. So I said those two little words all husbands learn to say when they really have no interest in doing something: “Yes dear." We had Jack baptized on Wednesday night in a private service with only a few of our close friends present.
During the service, the love and compassion that Father Ron showed Jack, left a slight crack in the hard stone wall I had built around my heart,
I didn’t know it then, but in few days he would offer some words of guidance that would bring everything I was dealing with into focus,. And, ultimately, would help me move past my emotional wounds. To this day, I am eternally grateful that God placed Ron Greiser in our lives.
The Saturday after Jack’s surgery Father Ron came to see us in the hospital. In the waiting room we sat and talked, while our wives visited my little man. We talked about sports, what it means to be a father, and life in general. Eventually, our wives came out of the ICU and it was our turn to go in. Looking down at Jack Father Ron asked me how I was. I still remember our conversation to this day. I told him I was pissed, pissed at God, at life, and this sucks: watching your child go through medical procedure after medical procedure.
His word was, “Its okay to be mad at God, in fact you can be mad at him and still love. After all you get mad at Ashley, don’t you? But you still love her right?” His next words perfectly explained to me exactly what I was dealing with, yet somehow didn’t quite understand, “You're grieving," he told me, " not the physical loss of your child, but, of the dreams you had for him and everything your dealing with is part of that process.” Until that moment I struggled not just with my feelings but also, with why I had them—It never occurred to me think that I was grieving.
Jack quickly recovered from his surgery and we took him home again, While I wish I could say that from the moment Father Ron and I had our conversation that I too was made whole, that would be a lie. However, little by little, day by day, I began to deal with, and face my anger. I understood where it was coming from and how to move past it. In my anger, all I could see were things Jack would never be able to do. But now I was beginning to see that, while my life with Jack was going to be different than I had planned, there were still going to be some pretty amazing things in our lives together. In fact, one of those amazing things would happen in about six weeks.
As a parent of a child with a craniofacial difference, one of the things you fear most is how people will treat your child. Because of everything Father Ron had done for us, one evening Ashley suggested that we should take Jack to Ron’s church and let him see how Jack was doing. “Yes dear”came out of my mouth again. While, I wasn’t quite as confused and angry, I wasn’t quite ready for church. I held Jack all through the sermon and afterwards a young girl, just in elementary school, came over, and asked to hold Jack, the little baby that the congregation had herd so much about.
The love, kindness, and genuine affection with which she held Jack moved me in ways I can’t explain; to see someone else love my child, who looks so different, gave me hope.
