You've been here before...

It’s winter, and the middle of the night. You hold him close, trying to make him comfortable, as you both lay reclined next to the open window. Icy cold air seeps into the room, you shiver and pull the blankets closer around the two of you.

You’ve been here before. You know.

Raspy breaths come from his tiny body, coughs strained.

You remember the last time, and part of you thinks it was so long ago. But it wasn’t. It was a mere year ago. A year ago when the last time happened, and you drove 80 mph down your country roads in the middle of the night as you brought your one year old to the ER. One year ago when he stopped breathing and became unconscious in the back of your van… one year from frantic calls to 911 at 3am as you pull your van over in the black of night and shake your child’s car seat hoping to get a response.

But you know. You know this time isn’t as bad. You know what the doctors will tell you. You know what to do.

The air is crisp, his breath evens, the cough lessens.

Yes, you’ve been here before.

So you lay with your babe, knowing it will be a long night. Knowing this is not the first time that night that you will sit by the window, where you will both get chills, where you will both pull the blankets in a bit tighter, but so the cold air can touch his lungs. So you sit, and you think…

You know his short life, which doesn’t seem that short… at least to you. Yet you wonder where all the time has gone. You talk to others and say things like ‘three or four years ago when he was a baby…’ but there is no three or four years ago… he is two, and he is still a baby.

Oh, but your baby, his life has been hard. He doesn’t know it, others might not know it, but you do.

You remember the many times he lay unresponsive, not being able to even tell if he is breathing shallow breaths. You remember the many times he threw up over and over again, until there was nothing left, but it would not stop even after his body had expelled every tiny bit that it could. And in between the painful stomach spasms, his eyes would glaze over, and you would cry his name over and over again with no response, as you would gently shake his 5 or 6 month old body. You remember the doctors gently telling you how he was having seizures during these episodes, but there was nothing to do… You just needed to wait…

He whimpers and coughs, yes, the cough still tight, but it’s getting better.

You remember the pain, the physical, white searing pain of feeding him for 10 months from your body. Too allergic to anything to try formula, too stubborn to take a bottle, too many bad experiences with normal food. Too many doctors telling you that you’d need to put him under to get his mouth fixed so it wouldn’t cause you anymore pain to feed him… but you knew. You knew you couldn’t do that, because he was allergic to things like oatmeal and ibuprofen… you had already thought you’d lose him so many times… what would happen if you gave him the strong drugs to put him under… no. So you remember the crying, the screaming, the white blinding pain, for every day, for ten months, just to feed him.

The crick in your neck grows worse as you shift him in your lap… but you’ve been here before, you have made it before.

His short life. Seeming so long at times. And here you are again, but this time you know. You know, but you never get used to the feeling of worry, or all the memories that it causes.

You want to scream, but you let the silent tears fall instead. You’ve almost lost each child, multiple times, and though you try to hold the memories at bay, they flood over you with immeasurable power.

You remember the ER trips when your son couldn’t breathe, his face too swollen from bee stings.

You remember your sons eyes rolling back into his head, and him falling into your arms as he goes limp, as you scoop up his tiny body and run across the lawn screaming for someone to call 911, certain you were holding the body of your dead child….

You can’t imagine what other parents go through who go through worse…

The tears are many. They feel hot as the cool air continues to flow in, the wind swirling outside.

He seems better… but you know. You gather him up, carry him back to his bed, he whimpers more. You know you’ll be back again, at the window, in the chair, listening to his raspy breath, and his strained cough, it won’t be the last time tonight. You kiss his face, cold from the winter air, yet soft and perfect.

You HAVE been here before… you know he is going to be ok… but you curl up on the hard wooden floor next to his bed, just in case, and waiting. Waiting for the next episode. Waiting for morning. Waiting for this to be a memory. Waiting for good. Waiting for grace.