Today

Three years ago, you left planet earth and went home. 

I know where you are, that is not the problem.

I am happy for you because you are experiencing what we only hope to experience…no more pain or sorrow.

You are happy, and at peace, and I know that.

You are with dad and “Lily Bear”.

Most of the time, I cope with missing you, but on days like this…dealing with the pain of loosing you is excruciating.

People say you left too early.

But did you?

Is our God not Sovereign over all?

Isn’t there a time to be born and a time to die ?

Aren’t the days of our life numbered?

Paul said to die is far better, but that is so hard to understand from a mom’s perspective.

I miss your laugh, your jokes, your texts, hearing of your goals in life, your questions…even your fears.

I have come to realize that there are thousands of moms who have gone through the loss of their children, I read and hear their stories in groups I participate it.

I have doubts and questions still…

I read of people who recovered after they were pronounced “brain dead” and I rejoice that they woke up.

I read of people who had strokes, and I know there were things that could have been done to help you but were not.

We were only told it was a “tragic, devastating injury and there was no hope… a catastrophic injury.”

I know now your brain was swelling and I know they didn’t “try” any of those things, I know they wanted your organs. I am still grateful that we learned enough in our short time in the hospital that brain death was “not” true death and I am thankful we did not let you be cut up while your heart was still beating because life was still in you.

I know we saw tears run from your eyes.

I know your arm moved in a deliberate manner not a spinal reflex.

I know we saw blood flow. “Well, we expected some blood flow” said the doctors yet the doctors didn’t tell us “that” only that it was a confirmatory test. Little did I know they were looking for a confirmation to back up their claim of “brain death” and not to see if you had blood flowing through your brain.

Because…there was blood flow.

I saw it.

The radiologist tech saw it.

Your medical records read, “not confirmatory for brain death.”

“Because the life of every creature is its blood.” (Lev.  17:14, cf. Gen. 4:10, 9:4-6, Deut. 12:33, Acts 15:29, Rev. 16:3) the scriptural focus for life in the body is not the brain but rather the blood. Once the blood fails to reach the cells and members of the body they promptly die.

I asked for an EEG to see brain waves, but we never got that either. Apparently that test was dropped after the Harvard criteria because when they tested it in Minnesota and found brain waves in patients they decided it would “be too confusing for family members” who they had to convince their loved one was dead.

I know that when a person is pronounced “brain dead” and recovers that the doctors in the US blame, “how the tests were done” and not the fact that brain death is a lie to get vital organs from a severely damaged person to pass along to someone who has a better prognosis.

I am sure you heard us as we prayed for God to wake you up. Where you scared when you heard the doctors discussing this in your presence? Did you hear the organ requestor pressuring us to give them your organs?

Where you afraid?

Did you like many other patients pronounced “brain dead” hear the doctors telling us this?

I tried to keep them out of the room but many didn’t care because they already thought of you as a corpse.

Did you think we had given up on you?

We did not.

I feel guilt constantly because we didn’t move you elsewhere,  in order to give you more time for the swelling in your brain to go down and to see if you could recover…in any capacity.

It is hard to fight “the system and protocols” set up in hospitals.

We were so uninformed at the time.

Now we know.

Jamie, I have been doing my best to educate people on the medical, legal fiction of so called “brain death”. I know it is helping from the emails I have received from people revoking their organ donor status and I am grateful for that…and yet some don’t know or want to believe it  and until they are faced with the traumatic decision and pressured by the Organ Procurement people are clueless what to do.

Life is life, not quality of life, or production in life but LIFE. Only God gives life, only He has the authority to take it away, not doctors who decide to give your life for another, no matter how altruistic and noble it sounds.

Christopher Reeves, lived on a Ventilator, what was wrong with that?  Look what he accomplished?  Research into spinal cord injuries.

Jamie, I would have taken care of you regardless of your condition, I suspect most families robbed of this choice would have too.

It is not about quality of life, it is about who is the author of life and who has the authority to take it away.

Not me.

Not you.

Not the well-meaning doctors.

God is the author and finisher of life, the Alpha and the Omega.

Life on earth is a dot.

But eternity is a ________(long line)________________________________________________________ lasting forever.

My heart aches for you, to touch you, hug you and talk to you.

Soon

One day we will all be together again and never say good-bye.

Until that day, I will fight the good fight, I will finish my race and then I will come home.

Until that day…know I love you and miss you and long for that day.

I am thankful I have video’s of you, songs you wrote and sang and I can hear your voice.

I still have a long way to go as I travel this journey called grief…the loss of a child.

I have no choice but to travel it, learn from it and hopefully help others.

And in those moments of greatest darkness, I will love you with an everlasting love. Again and again. (Jer. 31:3)

By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Hebrews 11:9-10.

Jamie Caulk quote:

My friends, you can paddle to the island where you can live a free life doing just like I did. Now my advice is just live like Christ lives, just one taste of Him

I’ll bet you’ll like it. He’s better than ANY of them vices I DID, now I wish he could live behind your eyelids – Jamie Caulk