by Tavis Smiley
Throughout the night we took turns checking on my father. The next morning, I spoke with a nurse who informed me that my father’s condition had not changed. I convinced her to speak to my mother and encourage her to go home, eat, and take her high blood pressure medication. She did, and my mother reluctantly agreed.
The next day there was no change, with Dad still unconscious and hooked up to every kind of machine imaginable. Some of the machines buzzed, some of them beeped, and some hummed while releasing liquid that eventually went into his veins. There was even one very loud machine that forced the air in and out of his lungs, since he wasn’t breathing on his own.
Another day passed, and still no change in my father’s condition. The family went home briefly to change clothes. When we returned, the neurologist who was treating my father met us in the doorway of intensive care. His exact words to my mother were “Mrs. Grant, you must know somebody in heaven!” My mother responded by saying, “I do!” At that point, the doctor went on to explain that the blood that had filled up in my father’s brain had drained out on its own, and the swelling had gone down as well. The doctor had absolutely no explanation for what had happened; in fact, he commented that he had never seen anything like it before. He explained that in the upcoming days my father would need to undergo spinal taps in order to determine where the blood had gone.
When we went to see my father shortly thereafter, he wasn’t able to talk yet but he was responding coherently to questions. When asked by hospital personnel how many children he had, he was able to answer by raising his fingers. After several days had passed, the same doctors explained to us that although my father had survived the aneurysm, he would never be the same. “We will be able to release him eventually, but he will probably be bedridden and require twenty-four-hour nursing care for the rest of his life,” the doctor said.
I was so grateful for my father’s life being spared that I didn’t think much about all the things the doctor had said. Later, my mother and I talked about hiring a nurse, getting a hospital bed, and trying to figure out if there would be enough medical insurance to cover all of this.
I took a leave from school so that I could be home with my mother and visit my father on a daily basis. He ended up spending three months in the hospital, and finally the day came for him to be released. We never had to buy that hospital bed or hire any nurses. My father walked out of that hospital on his own two feet. He wouldn’t even let the staff wheel him to the door in a wheelchair, which was hospital policy. The only lasting effect of the aneurysm was the loss of Daddy’s immediate recall. He could talk to me easily about things that happened when he was twelve, but sometimes he would forget during a conversation that he had already said something and he would repeat it.
I returned to school later that summer, but I had learned two of the greatest lessons of my life. I learned that God makes doctors and even endows them with the expertise and talent to treat patients, even if that sometimes means speaking words of comfort to heartbroken families. But the more important thing I learned is that nothing is so until He says it is so.
“YOUR CHILD HAS LEUKEMIA”
Keisha M. Brown
Okay, Jesus, tell me what to do now. Breathe, you say? I don’t think I know how to do that at this very moment, seeing as how all time, space, and being have ceased to exist. And even if I, somehow, by some small miracle, was able to remember how, I don’t think I would take the chance of moving and missing this doctor say, “Oops, I’m so sorry, I’m looking at the wrong chart. I’m not talking about your child at all—please forgive me.”
But I never heard those words. The doctors, having seen this look of terror on the faces of a thousand other parents, thought it best to leave the room to let the family digest the jagged pill that had just been shoved down our throats, cutting and burning the entire way down. Things then began to move in slow motion. The heel on my husband’s boot was all I saw exit the door before it closed behind him, to seek what I know was a small, dark corner to cry and pray. And there I sat enveloped in my in-laws’ arms, crying and screaming, “He’s just a baby!” And the more I screamed and heaved, the faster I slid into the realization that I felt worse with every breath. My insides wanted so much to come out to get air, but could not. My eyes wanted to cry harder, but the tears wouldn’t come any faster. And through all the commotion, my head was yearning to understand but failed to conceive.
“I need to be near him … I need to touch him … he needs his mother’s touch.” Mommy will make it all better. I broke away and darted to the bed where my child—my firstborn, my love—lay. I picked him up and held him and rocked him, wanting to be a Band-Aid for this big bruise called Leukemia: but to no avail … and reality had set back in. It was time to deal with this monster.
The doctors explained that there were cancerous cells in my baby’s blood and that there was a series of medications that would need to be started. This medication would, they hoped, kill the cancerous cells. Oh, by the way, they told me, these are not smart medicines, so while they are killing the bad cancerous cells, they will be killing some of his good, strong cells also. This will break his immune system and, unfortunately, leave him open to infection. But, they added, he was young and strong, and they saw a good prognosis. With that, the white jackets lined up and walked out of the room, vowing to return to begin treatment and answer any questions.
With that, I called my mother and explained it the best I knew how. The voice that had been so familiar and comfortable to me all of my life gave me no more comfort than that of a total stranger, as hard as she tried. I then called my father, who had been such a friend and confidant to me throughout my life. I explained the matter as best I could muddle through, and his response was, very matter-of-factly, “Oh, okay. Call me and let me know what happens.” His response made me feel as if I had just explained that my child had the common cold. Maybe I hadn’t been clear. So I repeated, “Yeah, this is what happened, Daddy. They say my child has leukemia.” His response again: “Okay, keep me abreast of what goes on.” With that, I had to hang up or else the little sanity that I was so desperately trying to hold on to would surely leave.
I sat by my child’s bed all night, forced to be alone with my own thoughts. Now, let me think, what could I have done differently? Could I have fed him more nutritiously? Did I take him off breast milk too soon? Did I not pay enough attention to the warning signs? Did I not act quickly enough? Then in chimed the doctors’ voices telling me that this disease is not hereditary, it has a quick onset, and the cause of it is unknown. Leukemia is less prevalent in the African American community, and it has a cure rate of approximately 80–85 percent for children with this particular form.
80–85% CURE RATE = HOPE
You see, God made me, and He knows that Keisha needs to see some hope to hold on to, and he loves me enough to give that to me. God knew that if I was to put on my armor and fight the good fight, he would have to show me a small ray of hope. Thank you, Jesus! For the next eight days, I lay in that hospital bed alongside my child, dealing with it the only way I knew how: praying and holding him close to me and not letting go as though I was trying to allow my love to come from my body and sink into his to heal his little body. And my husband coped by doing what works best for him, spending long hours in the hospital library reading all that he could about this disease. And my mother-in-law (the matriarch) continued to have us pull ourselves up by the bootstraps by not letting us forget what a great God we serve.
At the end of eight days of medication, spinal taps, blood draws, needles, and blood testing, the doctor walked into our hospital room and asked, “Who wants to go home?” I felt again the disbelief that had clouded my head with the news of the illness, but this time it was a little different:
LOOK AT GOD!
We were sent home with a frail and sick-looking little boy and a boatload of medication. I remember thinking, “God, there’s so much of it, why is there so much of it, and how am I supposed to r
emember when it is supposed to be given?” Then I thought about how much I loved my child and, so I said to myself, Keisha, you can do this! I proceeded to spread the medication out, grouped it by days, and began to mark up my calendar with a definite schedule.
In the next few years, little did I know that the Lord would allow me to experience many hurts and pains. In this time I would watch my son blow up like a balloon, lose weight, become sick to his stomach, experience mood swings, and lose and grow back his hair twice. In addition, I experienced employment and unemployment, which brought on financial problems and, in turn, marital troubles. I would go to the hospital at the first sign of a fever and sit in the emergency ward until the wee hours of the morning, sometimes staying longer. I say that God allowed me to experience these things because He loved me enough to know that these things would only strengthen me, and that through these experiences I would have no other alternative but to give God and only God the glory. He knew that only these experiences would allow me to appreciate the miraculous recovery that my son is experiencing now.
My son is now five years of age, soon to be six. He began kindergarten last September and, with God’s grace and mercy, will be finished with chemotherapy in March of 2002. My son has never had to have radiation or a bone marrow transplant and has remained in remission since eight days after his diagnosis on December 22, 1998. These are my blessings. Some may wonder how having leukemia can bring or be a blessing. I say that when your child or loved one has this disease, you find the blessings. I can remember my husband calling me on his way home from a late night of work once, about one year into our child’s illness. He was upset because, for whatever reason, on this particular day many people had inquired about our son’s health. He said, “Keish, I told them that he was okay, but also that my wife is so strong and does better with it than me.” I then responded by saying, “Stop telling people that, because if it were up to me, I would be a mess and things would have fallen apart a long time ago. You tell them that the Lord is our strength.”
AMBAY’S GIFT
Michael W. Catledge
Spring Break 1987 found me a twenty-one-year-old sophomore architect major at Florida A&M University, at a time-share condo at Indian Rocks Beach. Mother had just signed on with one of those time-share outfits that were booming up all over the Suncoast in the mid-1980s. As we lived in nearby Tampa, Mother thought having a time-share would be a good investment for the family—something we could enjoy once a year without having to journey far from home.
Her first “time slot” popped up just in time for my spring break. Unfortunately, Mother couldn’t take the time off from work to enjoy the time-share herself. Rather than pass over her time, she decided that James and I could use the condo for the week; she would join us on the weekend. Although not many twenty-year-olds would have welcomed the notion of having their six-year-old baby brother tag along, to me, spending time with Jimmy was a treat.
He was always in a happy spirit, and was very intelligent for his age. He taught himself how to read by thumbing through the TV Guide and matching the program listings to the broadcasts as they came on air!
On the third day of our vacation, Jimmy had slept restlessly and woke up crying. When I asked what was wrong, he told me he had had a bad dream. In the dream several people were standing over him, many were crying, and Mother was somewhere nearby with some hysterical woman. Noticing my distress, Jimmy took my hand and said, “But don’t worry, Mike. I was all right. Everything was a-okay in the end.” With that, Jimmy bounded out of the room and returned to his happy-go-lucky self.
Still a bit unnerved, I mentioned his dream to Mother when she called later that morning. Bothered herself—Jimmy had never had bad dreams before—she decided that after work she would hop over the bay and pay us a visit to make certain Jimmy was okay.
Jimmy and I continued to have fun that day, and didn’t even think about his dream again until Mother came bounding through the front door just after sunset and practically interrogated him about the dream. I understood, though. We are a deeply spiritual and earthy family that takes such occurrences seriously. Confident Jimmy was fine, Mother decided that she would take him on a moonlit stroll on the beach while I prepared dinner. Fifteen minutes later, she returned without Jimmy, looking quite puzzled. “Michael, did James come back up here?” she asked, glancing about the condo. “No, he didn’t,” I replied. “I thought he was with you?” “He was,” she said, “but I stopped to speak to someone downstairs and when I turned around he was gone.”
Mother and I ran back downstairs to the resort’s back patio facing the beach. Mother, thinking Jimmy might have wandered on shore, decided to search there while I tried to figure out where else he might have gone. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of some guy who, as he had stuck a pole under the surface, I thought was cleaning the pool. Which was odd, given the time of day. Suddenly, someone shouted, “Oh, my God! There’s a child at the bottom of the pool!” My heart dropped.
“No!” I screamed, as I dashed toward the pool area. Mother came running behind me. I reached the edge of the pool and looked down. I could barely make out a small fuzzy form lying motionless on the bottom. I’ll never forget the sight. By this time, Mother realized it was her child that the stranger was trying to fish out of the pool. She let out a bloodcurdling scream as she called out Jimmy’s name. Several women seemed to come out of nowhere to hold my mother back, refusing to allow her to see Jimmy’s body. Mother sat down and started to pray as the ladies tried to comfort her.
Without thinking, I threw off my glasses and jumped into the pool just as the stranger snagged the netted end of the pole around Jimmy’s legs and scooped him off the bottom. I swam over and grabbed hold of Jimmy’s motionless body. He was limp. It was awful. By then several people had gathered at the edge of the pool. They helped me lift Jimmy out of the water and onto the deck. Instinctively, the stranger who had pulled him off the bottom and I began administering CPR—I’ve never been so thankful of my high school gym teacher’s instruction in it in my entire life. I won’t describe the anguish I felt as I tried to pump air into the waterlogged lungs of my six-year-old brother, while the stranger tried to jump-start his heart. As I struggled to keep my mouth over his, those once bright sparkling eyes never moved, never blinked. Mother was unusually calm, surrounded by hysterical ladies. People stood around crying. It was then that I remembered Jimmy’s dream. I get chills even now just thinking about it.
After what seemed like hours, but was in actuality only a few minutes, the paramedics arrived and ordered the stranger and me to stand back while they tried to resuscitate Jimmy. One of them shouted, “We’ve got a pulse!” I ran over to Mother and told her that James was still alive. The look of despair in her eyes finally made me bust out in tears. Until then it had not really registered that this was happening. I was simply going through the motions and operating on adrenaline. Now it hit me—my baby brother might have died. I fell apart.
Later that same night, we received word from Key West that during the hour of Jimmy’s resuscitation, my mother’s aunt, Ambay, died of emphysema. It was as if she gave her last breath so that Jimmy could live. Certainly Jimmy’s revival was a gift to us all.
Note: The author of this piece has since gone to be with my aunt Ambay, my father, and my mother. He died in a car accident on January 17, 2002, eight days after his thirty-sixth birthday. There was not enough time for him to be given CPR, but thank God he was able to do that for his little brother. More important, thank God for his talent that enabled this piece to be written and preserved. May he continue to oversee us as we travel through this earthly journey. Jimmy (or James) is now twenty-one years old and eternally grateful to Michael and Ambay.
—Juliette Catledge, mother of Michael, Gregory, and James—all of whom I will forever be proud of.
GRIEF AND HEALING
HEALING
Tavis Smiley
When I was in the seventh grade, my sister Phyllis
and I were accused of doing something at church that we had not done. To understand the context, my mother and father were both leaders in our church; my mother was a missionary, and my father was on the trustee board and on the deacon board.
We had attended an afternoon service at the church, and some disruptive behavior took place during this program. Somehow the fingers got pointed at my sister and me as the ringleaders, even though we were innocent. In a subsequent church meeting, the minister of our church stood up in front of the entire congregation and accused Phyllis and me of being the culprits. He proceeded to scold us publicly.
I knew that Phyllis and I were in deep trouble when we got home. We tried to convince our parents that we were not responsible for the disturbance—we were simply somewhere in the vicinity when it happened. But my parents, as leaders in the church, were embarrassed at having their children’s names called out in front of the entire congregation. Unfortunately, we were unable to convince our parents that we were telling the truth.
My father in particular took our minister’s word over ours. When we got home from church following the evening service, my father was absolutely enraged. I had never seen him so upset before in my life. I knew we were going to get a whipping, as usual, with a belt or with switches. But it didn’t happen right away. My father, because he worked several part-time jobs to take care of the family, had to leave again to go to one of them. He didn’t return home until the wee hours of the morning.
