Today, December 1st, is a great day in our family! It's the day we celebrate the birth of my youngest son, Jaxon Jeremiah.
This morning, we woke up, me and the 3 "big kids" sang happy birthday to him, we got ready, dropped the big kids off to school then Jaxon and I started heading to his speech therapy, all things birthday and celebration on the mind. As we were driving down the road towards his therapy, we hit unusual traffic. As I got closer, I saw the reason why. The road was completely shut off with police securing the road. On Bear Valley Rd. at 8:00 in the morning, that means only one thing. There was a fatality. Someone will soon be getting a phone call that will devastate their lives. This will become the worst day of someone's life. From now on, they will always remember every December 1st as a day of great tragedy and loss. While over here in the Wetzel house, December 1st will always be remembered by our family as the day we were given the most precious gift ever- the gift of my son's first breath.
Thinking about this dichotomy took me back to a day nearly 4 years ago. One of my Jaxon's bad days in the Nicu. He was already around a month old and I had gotten up early and gotten ready to go down to see him when my phone rang. His doctor called every morning with updates but every Nicu parent knows the suffocating feeling of hearing their phone ring before it's time for updates. I answered it with my heart racing a mile a minute. His doctor asked me if I was coming down. Of course she knew I came in every single morning so the question threw me off. I told her I was about to head out now. She then told me that she would wait until I arrived and give me his update in person. I tried not to think about what that meant. She also said that she was going into a meeting and if she wasn't out when I got there to have my nurse go get her. None of this sounded good so as soon as I hung up, I threw my shoes on and jumped in the car. As I was driving the hour to the hospital, I was shaking inside and a constant flow of tears was pouring silently from my eyes. I kept telling myself that maybe it was something simple. It was nothing. She had seemed calm on the phone. Surely everything was fine. He'd had a decent day before, he couldn't turn so quickly. I remember thinking maybe I should have called my mom to drive me down. I was trying to be super careful because I knew I was upset and I didn't want it to make my driving careless. The freeway to the hospital is already a dangerous one.
At one point, I was stuck behind a slow car and at the back of my mind was the constant thought I was trying to ignore... "what if I get there too late?" I looked in my rear view and quickly popped a lane over cutting off a car coming up behind me. The guy (rightfully so) honked his horn at me but I continued on. I had more important things to focus on. I started thinking how my little move of cutting him off could possibly throw his whole day off. That happens all the time right? One thing said or done throws the whole day out of whack! He's irritated I cut him off and becomes a grumpy driver and then a grumpy person and now it's started a ripple effect and his whole day might be bad now.
But my son was hanging by a thread to life fighting in the Nicu.
That guy was probably headed to work. He could have been headed anywhere really but it was 6:00am on the 15 South. That's commuter traffic so most likely it was to work. I started thinking how he had no idea that while he was irritated with me for cutting him off while he's headed to work or to shop or to a meeting, I'm trying to get to the hospital to see my son before it's too late. I've been making this exact same drive every single morning for a month and will hopefully continue making it every morning for a couple more months until I can bring him home. I thought how I might have even been making this drive every morning alongside this same guy and every morning he passed me having no idea what kind of battle my son faced each and every day. What kind of battle my whole family was going through. My 3 small kids at home who have a little brother they love dearly but they may possibly never even meet. Living from home to home of family members trying to help alleviate some of the stress. Not understanding the depth of what was going on or why our family was never together but knowing that something was so off balance with the world. My husband- single parenting our older 3 kids so I could heal from months of bedrest and a traumatic C-section and also so I could be with my baby every day the way a mother should be able to be with her newborn. All the while living with the constant fears of being the father of a beloved child, our Jaxon so sick and his daddy not being able to fix everything for him. The helplessness we each faced every day knowing that our whole world was riding on the shoulders of a 2 pound tiny little human whose body was too frail to even function without intense medical intervention.
This guy who honked at me when I cut him off, he had NO IDEA! Then...I remember thinking, he may not be headed to work. This isn't JUST commuter traffic. Obviously I'm on this road and I'm not commuting. Anyone who lives in the high desert takes this same road to get to Kaiser like me or also Loma Linda, CHOC, UCI...all the hospitals. My sons not the only sick baby. What if he is making this drive for the same reason I am? What if he got a phone call this morning? What if his child has been battling cancer at CHOC and he still has hours of traffic to reach her in time. It dawned on me that not only do other people that I pass by daily in the grocery store, on the roads, at a restaurant...not only do they not know the battles that I was fighting daily, that my son, my family was fighting daily, but I also didn't know THEIR battles. I didn't know what loss they were dealing with. What grief they were working through. Their struggles. Yes, my battle was HUGE! It was life altering! My universe in the middle of an astronomical shift. But everyone has a battle. EVERYONE has a struggle, deals with grief, loss, tragedy. My battle shouldn't close me off to others' struggles, it should do the opposite. It should make me more understanding and compassionate.
Ever since that day, since that revelation, I've tried to live my life with respect and compassion for people. To have patience with people. The waitress who gets my order wrong and never refills my drink...maybe she lost sleep last night because she was sitting up with her dying mother. The guy being rude in line at the store? Maybe today is the 3 year anniversary of when his wife died in a car accident. And the woman who cut me off on the freeway? Just maybe she's rushing down to the hospital to get to her sick child's side before it's too late to say goodbye.
Some days are in our book as days of celebration, some as days of tragedy and others as just regular days of life but I guarantee every day of the year is both celebrated and mourned by somebody. You never know what a particular day means to someone, you never know what a person is going through when you pass them by. Patience, kindness, compassion, love...everyone can use these no matter what kind of day it is. We are celebrating today but remembering the battle that was fought fiercely and tirelessly to get to this day. Also with the realization that there are those who will grieve tragedy today. We won't take it for granted that the Lord has blessed not just Jaxon but all of my family with health and happiness today. We are not guaranteed tomorrow or even tonight but we do have RIGHT NOW! This exact moment in time.
"You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away."
-James 4:14 (ESV)
"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a hope and a future.'"
-Jeremiah 29:11
