The Day Her Spirit Lived.


The night grew dark as the snow muffled the world around me as I lay next to my beautiful 4 year old daughter. The smell of death permeated the air in the bedroom. Her breath was rough and forced, her skin was hot to the touch, her eye... more

The Day Her Spirit Lived.





The night grew dark as the snow muffled the world around me as I lay next to my beautiful 4 year old daughter. The smell of death permeated the air in the bedroom. Her breath was rough and forced, her skin was hot to the touch, her eyes where half closed, and her coloring was patchy with purple and pale pink. I knew this was her last night on this earth, so I stayed awake so not to miss the slightest movement or murmur. Her throat roared with mucus and saliva because she could not swallow. I slowly suctioned her mouth and throat to make her more comfortable. There is a precision to suctioning and a comfort knowing it may not make her live but it could ease her dying. The continuous morphine dripping into her veins alleviated her pain.

Lying beside her my thoughts drifted back upon the brief time I had with her, my mind recreated her image as a healthy child laughing and playing, running and singing, talking and crying, watching with each passing day her subtle deterioration over the period of a year, first starting with uncontrolled seizures ending in inability to walk or talk, and with slight paralysis on her right side. Her brilliant smile endured even to the end, it may not have been symmetrical, but it was hers nonetheless. Her eyes where a deep brown reflecting any light that caught them. Once life swelled in her eyes, now death has focused its’ sights on her brow. She lay beside me a shell waiting to be released from the body that has become her prison; part of her was cool and lifeless. Her toes to her stomach have been dying and shut down for days, this accounted for the bowel and medicine smell around her. Her hands where still pliable but without feeling or movement. The hours passed, and slowly from the top of her head, her skin began to turn color. Her palms were dark purple where her blood pooled beneath the skin as she rested them on the bed. Slowly, her right underarm and side began the transition of no circulation stopping the blood where it lay in her veins. Her head swelled at the site of her surgery incisions protruding past her ear on the left side. My thoughts and prayers where with her that she had no pain and no realization of what was happening to her body. I prayed to God for mercy and I believe he gave her mercy the last days of her life, especially this last night.

As she rested comfortably and without movement, her forced breath echoed throughout the trailer (it sounded like a faint dog bark). I positioned myself on her left side taking in the smell of her breath. It wasn’t the sweet breath she used to have when she was healthy; it was a morbid smell that came from her lungs and mouth. It made me nauseous, but I held my position. I thought to myself that nothing on this earth could give me pause about taking in the aroma of my sweet child on the last night of her life. Throughout the night, I slipped into a light sleep, awakening abruptly making sure I had not missed her passing I noticed her coloring had returned to normal. I was so confused. I stood up and asked aloud if she was supposed to live. Part of me wanted to shout out for a miraculous healing, the other part prayed to God for his will to be done. I began to second-guess the peace I was given by God during her path to death. I was so strong and certain she was going to die. I gave control over to God and knew no matter what that I would accept his will. But at this moment, I questioned my God and myself. Selfishly I thought to myself, she has to die; I would resent her if she didn’t. This thought paralyzed me with fear that I had wished her death, I had been waiting for it, waiting for the release I hoped to feel when my life was my own again. Did I wish for her dying so long (it seemed), that I would resent her living if God blessed me with a miracle? How could I be so selfish! Why didn’t I call to God for a miracle, WHY?

My heart knew the answer, but my conscious mind, in order to accept this nightmare, this dream, this hell on earth of losing my child grasped to every self-demoralizing figment I could conceive of protecting myself against the rage within me, rationalizing this moment in my life as my decision if my beautiful child lived or died. To hold for a moment control of the uncontrollable and to ease the grief that is yet to come. Just then, the unbearable grief, the unmistakable knowledge that this is truly happening crashed through all the peace I held and made me crumble. MY BABY! Why take my baby? Why God? What did I do? My baby is dying! My cry was of moaning, my heart throbbed with pain like I have never felt, and I couldn’t take anymore! I looked at my mom asking her why isn’t she gone? When is she going to die? Why doesn’t God take her? At that moment, I remembered one of the nurses saying to me “This is her journey, she will complete it when she is ready; when you feel you can take no more, God will step in and bring her home!”

During my breakdown, which lasted about twenty minutes, I ended up in the living room away from her; I calmed myself and walked down the hall to our bedroom where she lay flat on her back on the lower left side of the bed. I laid on her right side cupping her head in my hands. Within seconds, she began to do the fish out of the water movement that happens to people when they die. Her chin forced itself up in the air and down again about ten to fifteen times. Her head went limp and fell to her right side. I was waiting for a final breath, but she didn’t have one. My father was standing at the foot of the bed and said “It’s over”, I looked to my sister on the other side of Brittany and said, ”I didn’t hear her last breath, I didn’t feel a release of her spirit!” My sister was crying and said that she felt it, she felt the angels take her home. I positioned myself over her body and placed my head on her torso and yelled the only thing I could, ”Thank God, my baby is out of pain, my baby is out pain!”





Brittany died on November 28, 2001 at 9:45 a.m. (two years to the day my grandmother passed away) her passing was very peaceful. I am comforted knowing that my Brittany has a full head of hair, can walk and run with the other children, can talk and smile the perfect smile, and as I write this, is playing in God’s Garden. Her precious body may have died, but for the first time I know her spirit is truly living