Seven years ago today I let my infant daughter go.

She was our third daughter. Our fifth child. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

She was our brown-eyed girl.

I last looked into those brown eyes seven years ago tonight.

I last kissed those cheeks and forehead seven years ago tonight.

It is a story that spans nearly 10 weeks…that’s how old she was when she died — ten weeks old to the day. Perhaps I will chronicle that time in a page devoted to her on this site sometime soon.

Today, I simply want to honor her memory.

After all she went through, I wanted to tell all who would read this about one of my heroes.

She had survived a particularly aggressive form of meningitis and was released from the hospital (again, I may tell the story later) after a four-week course of an antibiotic cocktail, only to be re-admitted 10 days later for dehydration, a complication from the antibiotics.

That second hospital stay lasted 13 days.

The morning of November 20, 2000, I remember finally releasing her in my heart into the hands of God. I had been asking Him to heal her for nearly 8 weeks, wanting her to be done with illness and home for good.

It dawned on me that morning that I was wanting her to be whole and healthy on my terms.

After reading Psalm 91 over her each day believing she would eventually be through the woods and all would be well with the world, I somehow I found it within myself to pray this prayer that day:

“Lord, if healing for her means being with You, on the other side of the Cross, then I’m okay with that. I just don’t want her to suffer anymore. I want her to be free, whatever that means. Just heal her. She’s Yours anyway.”

She was doing so well that night when I left her bedside to go to get some sleep. She was sedated, but holding her own. She was in fact doing better than she had been the whole week prior.

So, sleep came easily to me that night.

Then…….the phone call.

The wall phone rang at 2:30 AM in our Newborn Intensive Care Unit parents’ sleeping room. Not our NICU parents’ pager.

The phone.

Middle-of-the night phone calls are never good. But maybe….?

The NICU operator needed us to come to the NICU immediately.

To her nurse’s surprise, she had taken a very sudden, catastrophic turn. Her neurological exam had been perfect only 20 minutes earlier. Then, unexpectedly, her alarms sounded.

“A catastrophic event” is what the NICU attending called it.

“Catastrophic” does not even begin to describe the “event”…..

I remember thinking, “Thanksgiving is in two days. How will our family be able to celebrate Thanksgiving and plan our infant daughter’s funeral?”

Emotional shock is a wonderful thing. I must have functioned on some sort of “autopilot” because I don’t much remember Thanksgiving that year. I remember that I, my husband and our kids shed many, many tears together that week.

Despite our family’s tragedy, I realized I had many things for which to be thankful: the fact that my eyes beheld her, that my arms held her, that I was able to nurse her and be by her side each day. That I saw her smile. That I spent all of her 70 days with her. That our children knew their baby sister, if only just a little.

And, I was thankful she was no longer in pain.

She was a hero. She was strong. She beat us to heaven. She fought a great fight and touched many lives during her 10 weeks.

We still cry. And we smile. And we blow kisses toward heaven, asking God to “plant them” on her for us.

We belong to the club of those who have out-lived their children for one reason or another. No parent wants to be a part of that club. But we survive it. We are stronger for it.

We get to celebrate and reflect, laugh and cry if we want….together. It’s Thanksgiving.

© Alexa Lopez 2007